Reuse culture – The Hindu

During the pandemic, life was reduced to its barest and most essential minimum. Wardrobes could be pared down: the regular sweatshirt and nightie were haute couture. One could get by on fewer possessions with the most indispensable one being the face-hugging mask. The commute became redundant. One could be parked at home along with their fancy car, and still enter workstations parked at homes thousands of miles away. The period offered gratuitous advertisement for minimalism. The birth of these two decluttering groups seemed organically linked to this pervasive climate.

These two groups — Declutter Elcot Avenue in Sholinganallur (date of birth: first half of 2020) and Marketplace @ Valmiki Nagar (DOB: November 2020) — facilitate the selling and buying of used items to promote a culture of reuse at the hyperlocal level, within communities defined by geography. These groups have gained loyal members by the dozens over the last four years while helping them “lose” underused things, thereby decluttering their spaces. 

Here is a peek into their inner workings.

Declutter Elcot Avenue

It was formed a decluttering group. In a case of twisted irony, it needed the very solution it was offering the community.

A scrawny neonate when the pandemic crept in, this group grew into a hulk of a creature before the global health crisis was past, eventually becoming full to bursting. It was not alarming corpulence to be chipped away at, but valuable muscle that needed to be evenly distributed. Some members were “evacuated” from the primary WhatsApp group before it imploded from the pressure of its ballooning size and ushered into group two, which displays a similar growth pattern.

The numbers for both groups: Declutter Elcot Avenue 1 (it hit the ceiling on the number of members that can be in a WhatsApp group) and Declutter Elcot Avenue 2 (700).

Benazir Tehrani, who started this initiative and continues to watch over it, can allow herself some smugness.

“It is definitely really big because it has maxed out on one group, and now it is going to the other,” Benazir emphasises, adding that a telegram group existed but was struck off the list as a majority were not savvy in using it. She takes pride not so much in the size of this initiative as in its ability to galvanise the community into positive action.

The initiative had an unassuming genesis: at her gated community in Elcot Avenue, Sholinganallur, she noticed items with some years still left in them being rudely carried to the burial ground, well dumping ground. It tantamount to burying someone alive.

“There were certain times, near the dustbins, I used to see huge mattresses in good condition. It did not look like there was anything wrong with them,” she recalls. Inspired by similar decluttering initiatives in other cities, Benazir decided to replicate the concept in her own community. “During COVID, we all had a lot of time on our hands. And this was a concept which I know a few complexes in Bombay had adopted; I thought, why not just start something here?”

As the group continues to expand significantly, Benazir and the team (Ramasamy, Arun, Rakesh Ohri, and Sujatha) often find themselves in the challenging role of guiding and managing it and striving to maintain order.

Among the instructions continually relayed to members are: “If you are part of declutter one; you cannot hope to be part of declutter two.” “Business promotions are not permitted; no real estate listings please!” “Please include detailed descriptions in your posts, such as: “Cycle, 4-5 years old, used for 1 year, selling for ₹700.”

Benazir believes in the concept of “a reuse culture fostered locally” which would be defeated if the group extends beyond Elcot Avenue.

Benazir shares a hope for the future: “I wish someone would really just create an app,” which can be used by groups locally for decluttering exercises in their communities.

Marketplace @ Valmiki Nagar 

With greater disposable time, during the pandemic, people broke new ground: by developing a latent talent, mastering an altogether new skill or enhancing their qualifications through certifications from online learning programmes. Gripped by the zeitgeist of those times, Valmiki Nagar Residents Welfare Association steered its sustainability journey into partly uncharted territory.

Now, if there were a sustainability school for resident welfare associations, this RWA would be among the class toppers: a student who would turn in their assignments with the time-keeping ability of Big Ben; and redefine weekends as a time for library-hopping. Its solid waste management track record has often ensured the RWA a coveted place in Greater Chennai Corporation’s consultative meetings with residents.

Jayanthi Premchander, a key member of the RWA, begins: “Valmiki Nagar was always a little ahead in waste management and segregation, spreading awareness.” And the studious student named Valmiki Nagar RWA plumped for an elective course, though enough credits were already lodged in the kitty.

“We decided: why don’t we have a decluttering group for Valmiki Nagar, for people to exchange items such as books or sell things?” she reflects. “It was basically for reuse and recycling.”

The group — named “Marketplace @ Valmiki Nagar” — initially grew with the growing strides of the Fibonacci series and it now seems to be hovering somewhere around a number that it was bound to yield. Valmiki Nagar does not have towering residential buildings, only a scattering of standalone apartments, each composed of dwelling units in the range of 10 to 15. The only gated community in the neighbourhood consists of four blocks, each consisting of three floors.

“The group started in November 2020, and has almost 700 members now,” she shares. As the group expanded, the focus also evolved.

Jayanthi explains, “The group has evolved from just a decluttering exercise to accommodate another quality — that of “yellow pages. We share useful information such as where to source items: to cite a recent example, a member in the group successfully sought information on where to source a wheelchair. We help small businesses by letting them promote their products in the group.”

Jayanthi stressed the importance of regulatory principles set in iron to prevent the group from becoming disorderly. “We ask them to keep business deals private through private messaging; in other words, the buyer cannot negotiate over prices in the group,” she advises. “It is important to regulate the group and ensure nobody posts any content that is inflammatory in nature and creates bad blood among members.”

Keeping a tight rein on members needs a force: so Shuba, Vinay, Arvind, Abhilash  Jaishanka and Jayanthi function as admins. 

Jayanthi remarks, “If someone wants to start a similar initiative, they need to have a clear purpose and at least three or four admins to regulate it.” The effort to create a sustainable and supportive community has not only helped reduce waste but also nurtured a sense of solidarity among neighbours and other constituents of the social ecosystem such as those who have ended up on the less-privileged side of life.

Subha illustrates this: she once bought toys from Marketplace @ Valmiki Nagar for her maid’s daughter for just ₹100; and these toys were of impressive quality.