Mission Cleanliness: Sharing Few Good Practices

Cleanliness is not only a public health matter; it’s a reflection of a civilized society.  How a community or a country becomes clean is a complex and usually a lengthy phenomenon. It requires a combined intervention of public health policies and change in social or cultural behaviors- both are often mutually inclusive.

Most of the developed countries were plagued with diseases, war and poverty before they were able to realize the importance of personal hygiene, sanitation and cleanliness. With such realization came changed individual behavior, social norms, and public policies, all of which contributed to build clean and healthy societies in those countries. This is not to say that all communities, cities and villages of the developed countries are clean, as it depends on various factors; but on average they are clean.

Developing countries these days don’t have to go through such undesirable events like diseases and war calamities to adopt clean practices. They have an easy access to a zillion of low cost or no cost good practice examples from around the world both in policy design and enforcement, and social behavior and normative change that can be easily adapted into local context. All it is needed is a collective passion for change and a vision, and political willingness. There are several good practices to follow even in complicated aspects like political willingness. Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi’s Clean India Campaign is just one recent example.

In this blog, I have captured few pictures of my current hometown in USA to exemplify a couple of good practices that I believe are helping to make my community look clean. The first picture shows few metal signboards stuck in the ground. These signboards are to advertise new houses that are on sale in the area, and they can be easily pulled off from the ground when they are not needed. They haven’t created visual pollution, and the materials used can be recycled.

The second picture shows a few workers hired by our Homeowner’s Association to help clean the community we live in. A Homeowners Association is a community body established to monitor and enforce the rules created by the association. It maintains the economic and social value of the community. As apparent in the pictures, the workers are using simple technology—the portable air blowers-- to clean the dead leaves off the ground alongside the street. These air-blowers clean dust, dead leaves and other light trashes off the ground without having the workers use labor-intensive tools such as brooms.

Practices and technologies like these can be easily adapted in developing countries. I said adapted, not replicated, because we know that most developing societies are constrained in basic fundamentals of development such as electricity, water etc. So instead of conventional energy, solar-energy-fueled air-blower can be developed. Instead of perfectly shaped and painted metal signboards, hand-painted signboards can be used in an organized fashion. The point is that simple ideas like these can greatly help reduce and manage unnecessary trash, and help maintain the aesthetic view of the communities. By aesthetic, I didn’t mean to treat this topic as something that’s not as critical for wellbeing. To me, it is a development vision that I see on things, which in this case is my neighborhood. I truly believe that everyone deserves to live in a reality of such a vision.