Project One 'I'

  Upon on arriving on Kathmandu almost 15 year ago I found out one of the infamous rumor that Kathmandu         was one the dirtiest city of Nepal seemed very much true. And 15 years later that rumor is still somehow           valid.

      And for last 15 years I have been complaining every day. But day by day I too became part of the problem.           Like many Kathmandurs I am also complaining and complaining but doing nothing.

     Project one is a different part photo series me trying my best to explore environmental aspect, human               behavioral aspect and health hazard relating to human waste to present in visual and research form.

     In Project One 'I' I have try to explore street waste problem in Kathmandu and try to visually express my              frustration, my inability to address the problem towards street waste problem in Kathmandu

On a average 1 person produce 0.74 kg/day ranging from 0.11 kg to 4.5 kg/day (as per world bank) which may not seems much but over our life time one single person can produce 64 tons of waste during our lifetime.
And Kathmandu city produce 523.8 tons of solid waste everyday where 69.3 metric ton of waste is collected from street litter which is 20% of litter is directly dumped in streets.
Some of the most common found waste on the streets of Kathmandu are usually not big waste but the ones which can properly dumped in container like cigarette buds, chocolate wrappers, recharge cards etc.

Most of the cigarette buds and plastic tea cups are collected from sidewalks of small tea shop around the alley which are mostly crowded by the Nepali youth. Often found talking about the country’s politics as they sip a tea with a puff of cigarette, made me wonder when they get frustrated with the country’s politics blunting out the difficulties and pain caused by the instable government and some might even swear to do things to bring change, do they ever think about the plastic tea cup or cigarette buds they threw on the street. Because part of the problem is here. They might talk about wanting to have clean politics but if we cannot keep our self a clean street how do we except to have clean politic. Revolution begins from one step, one change, from street, from trying to recognize the smallest problem.

‘It’s just a single straw said by the billon’ movement really inspired me to take a look into small things that can be easily managed. Most of the small things that I have collected from the street are easy to manage and we do not have to blame government for its incompetency when the incompetency lies within us. Imagine what we can do if all of the people truly believe their action can make a difference.

Often looking at the bigger picture we tend to forget that the bigger picture is build by addressing and coherenting smaller problem piece by piece. Bigger picture might be captivating and alluring to create a conversation but it might be deceiving. All the bigger issues are the conjunction of all the small piles of unnoticed, unsolved and unaddressed realities. Through this project I want to address small environmental problem with underlying bigger issue that remain unaddressed.