KACHRA

KAHANI
AN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
 AUTHORS
Anusha Rayani
Soha Randhawa
Syed Ali Arshad
Areba rehman khan

AKNOWLEDGEMENT
Our Special thanks to Ms. Hira Zuberi
for her constant support and guidance, to Orangi Pilot Project,
especially Mr. Ashraf for supporting and facilitating our research,
to Mr. Farhan Anwar, for advising us throughout the process, to
organizations including Trashit.pk, Gul bahao Trust and Anmol
Zindagi Trust for providing us with their time and knowledge on
this burgeoning environmental crisis. And finally, the wonderful
homemakers of Karachi without whom the content of this
booklet wouldn't have been possible.
PROJECT
This interactive booklet provides a brief introduction to all the traditional
waste management practices, categorized under five major themes.
Engaging the reader with the content, the booklet contains concise
guide scripts on how to adopt the traditional practices in our everyday
context. The reflection boxes are there for you to scribble down your
thoughts on the material and to maintain a personal waste production
log to write your own 'Kachra Kahani'.
Composting

Egg Shells
What has to be broken before you can
use it? An egg of course! But will you
be surprised to know if I tell you utility
does not only lie in the liquid content?
Egg shells improve calcium in the soil
and help plants build healthier  cell
walls. Legend has it that many home
makers in the past, especially the
Baloch and the Bihari communities
were not dumping egg shells rather
using it to improve their soil quality.

Tea Leaves
Tea leaves are also very popular
component for composting.. It
provides nitrogen to the soil which
helps plants get greener. The next
time your brew your tea, in a kettle or
in a bag, do not forget to bury it in soil
instead of washing it away in the sink
or in the bin.

Hodi System
Punjabis practice a unique "Hodi
System" method where household
waste water, including kitchen waste
water, is directly disposed off to
custom made pits in their lawns,
"kiyaaris", or even subsistence farms
in case of villages. 
Fallen Leaves and petals
Fallen leaves, rose petals and rotten
vegetables- these are all the things
and more that can be used as a
convenient and all-natural fertilizer
for your plants. All it takes is some
digging and throwing and covering!

Compost Pits
As a child, did digging the soil ever
catch your fascination? Or did you
ever wonder what will you come
across as you keep digging the soil?
Park that thought. Several
communities in Karachi dug pits in
their backyards and used to dump
the organic waste there. After
fermentation, the waste was used as
a fertilizer for the plants.

Rice Water
Every component in household use
of rice is important. The rice water
that is used to put rice in, before its
ready to be cooked is mostly thrown
away in sink after the rice is taken
out. Use it to water your plants
instead. As an NPK fertilizer, rice
water helps plants produce more
leaves and have a higher biomass to
retain their freshness.
 Do It Yourself

Making your own composting bin

Things you need

Pot Kitchen Waste Soil Recycled Papers

Steps to take
Dump the contents in the following order and
leave it 20 days for fermentation

Soil

Paper Waste

Kitchen Waste

Soil

Or Just bury it in your Pots...

Use rice water, tea
water or boiled
Eggshells vegetables water
Teabags for added nutrition.
Composte at a community level

Things you need

Your lawn or a Showel Kitchen Permission

shared lawn Waste letter from UC,
if the lawn is
shared.

Steps to take

Dig a hole, Add kitchen Waste.

approx 6 x 4 ft.

Add water. Cover it with wood or

steel lid.
Do It Yourself
Recycling

Tote Bags from Used Clothes

Have a pair of jeans pants or a T-Shirt
that you do not wear anymore? You
can use them to make your own
clothe tote bags! Look for open ends,
sew them and create handles. A tote
bag for grocery shopping is ready.

Cardbox & Cartons as Furniture

A solution that saves space and
valuable cash, a feasible solution
especially for hostilities and their likes,
is using carton and hard card boxes
for keeping clothes and other similar
items. Card boxes are the new handy
furnitures!

Arts & Craft using Tin Boxes

The ghee k dabbay and the tin boxes,
which has your favorite cocktail but
Ammi has strictly asked to not come
in 10 meter radius of it. These boxes
come in very handy when it comes to
filling your study space with pen-
holders and finding a space for your
plants.
Pizza Box Frames
Believe it or not, the beautiful wall
decoration that you see in the image
is all made of pizza boxes! These
leftover card boxes can be converted
into great works of arts and craft.

Cloth Sanitary Pads

Big label sanitary pads in the market
are all made up of non-reusable. non-
biodegradable plastic material. There
still exist households that make use of
their old clothes to make clothe
sanitary pads at home. Scientifically,
this is also a much cleaner and more
hygenic option to its industry
manufactured plastic counterparts.

Loofah Scrubs
On a normal Saturday afternoon, you
ran out of your favorite body scrub
and you are too lazy to make a trip to
the market. Wait for Monday? No,
Find your mum's favourite, dry ridge
gourd (or touri) lying in the fridge.
Take it out, peel it, and leave it out in
the sun to dry for a few hours. Extract
the jaal and use a completely-plastic
free scrub.
 Do It Yourself

Plastic Shopping Bag Alternative

Things you need

A spare shirt Scissor Needle & thread

Steps to take

Take a spare shirt/t-

Fold it into half, and cut it
shirt.
from the dotted lines.

Unfold the the Stitch it from the bottom, and

cloth. the bag is ready.
Arts & Crafts - Photo Frame from a Pizza Box

Things you need

Pizza Box Scissor Decorative paper or

Paints

Steps to follow

Take an empty
Close the box.
pizza box.

Cut the upper part Cover it with a decorative paper

from the dotted lines and paste a picture
Cardboard as Furniture - Making a Bookshelf

Things you need

Carboard Boxes Cutter Scotch tape/ Paper

tape
Steps to follow

Take empty cardboard boxes

and cut out the dotted parts. After cutting, the box should
look like this

Tape the boxes together Your bookshelf is ready.

Do It Yourself
Reusing

Reusable Plastic Lawn Diapers

Have a pair of jeans pants or a T-Shirt
that you do not wear anymore? You
can use them to make your own
clothe tote bags! Look for open ends,
sew them and create handles. A tote
bag for grocery shopping is ready.

Lemon Peels for Dishwashing

You must have seen that dishwashing
soap commercials heavily advertise
the fact that their formulas include
real lemon because its citric acid
helps clean mineral deposits. Well,
now you know that lemon leftovers do
not belong in your dustbin, but in
your dishwashing bowls. The naturally
occurring  lemon oil in its rind has
antibacterial and cleaning properties.

Reusable Wheatish Gunny Bags

Often a times, we see our monthly
stack of flour, rice, and vegetables
arriving in big, wheatish colored boris
(gunny bags). Do you throw it away?
Well, from now on, reuse these bags
for packing away old clothes or
utensils. There product life-cycle
allows them to last way longer than
we think.
Reusable Bamboo Sticks
Before plastic toothbrushes, there was
an era of bamboo toothbrushes and
miswaks. One stick of miswak should
easily last you a week of guaranteed
oral hygiene. Now, even if you throw it
out, the wood would decompose
much much faster than your previous
plastic toothbrush helping you reduce
your carbon footprint.

Reusing Tin Boxes for Storage

To those who spent quality time with
their grannies, they would realize the
value a biscuit  tin box has, To store
threads or not, this one trend shall
never die. So next time before
throwing away plastic or tins, try to
think of how useful it can be in storing
the many pens or crayons that lay
scattered on your desk.

Boiled Rice Water Fiber Starch

How to boil rice? Put rice with water
in a pan and place it on the stove with
high heat. After 15 minutes of boiling,
turn off the heat and DON'T strain
away the water. Because this boiled
rice water can be used as fiber starch
for cotton clothes. Soak them
overnight. And this is how you get
done with two chores at once with no
plastic involved.
 Do It Yourself

Reusing boil rice water to starch shirt

Steps to follow

Take boiled rice water.

Soak the shirt overnight in

the water.

The shirt is starched now.

Do It Yourself
Health and Beauty

Jaman Powder To Treat Diabetes

The  indigo-colored, oval-shaped fruits
we know as Jaman  are small but its
seed has the ability to treat diabetes.
The formula is simple: squeeze out
the seeds and carefully remove the
flesh part. Leave them to dry till the
outer shell comes off easily. Then
ground them once fully dried up. Eat
one spoonful of jaman powder every
morning before breakfast.
So don't throw them out yet!

Pomegranate Peel
Pomegranate seeds, how little they
are that some of us swallow it and
some of us spit it out after eating its
flesh. Apart from being an antioxidant,
the pomegranate peels when dried
and crushed into a powdery form can
help heal inflammation, arthritis  pain
and prevents cancer.

Dhooni
In most of our houses, we have steel
with plastic lid air fresheners, which
come in a variety of fragrances,  and
with harmful chlorofluorocarbons. But
what other option do we have? We
do. If not incessant sticks, then coal
that can be placed in some
fragrant  oil and lit. This will fill your
house with guaranteed 100%
fragrance and 0% carbons emissions.
Orange Peel Facemask
It's winter and your fridge is stuffed
with oranges, also the dry weather
has badly affected your skin. Orange
peels are here for the rescue! Just
don't throw them away. Instead, turn
the page and follow the process of
making orange peel powder, When
you are done, mix the powder with
some goat milk to form a paste. Then,
as they say, 'gently apply it on your
face'. Wash it away after 15-20 mints.

Banana Peels To Treat Migraine

Ever had a migraine or a very bad
headache that won't leave you for
hours? Well, then you must try
massaging your head with a banana
peel. "What if I don't have a headache
while I am eating a banana?" Follow
the banana peel DIY below to find
your answer.

Homemade Soap
You must wonder with all the animal
fat loitering the streets during the
time of Eid Festival, is this really of no
use? Some communities in Karachi
make soaps at home using the animal
fat, some of us choose to throw out.
After several hours of boiling, when
the fat turns into a thick yellowish
paste, carbon soda is added and then
it is poured into a prepared plastic
mold. The soap is ready to use after 24
hours of saponification.
 Do It Yourself

Using orange peel powder as facemask.

Things you need

Orange peel
Goat Milk  or water
powder

Orange Peel Powder Recipie

Steps to follow

Take orange peels Remove the white fibre

Sun-dry the peels. The drying Ground the dried peels. The
will take upto 2 -3 days. powder is ready.
Using Banana peels to cure Migrane

Steps to follow

Take Banana peels.

Cut the peels into smaller

peices.

Put the peels inside a zip lock bag and

freeze. In case of a severe migraine or an
unbearable headache, you will readily have
banana peels to place on the affected area.
Do It Yourself
Packaging

Plant-based Crockeries
a privilege of living in Pakistan is that
we have access to environment
friendly and splendid looking crockery
with designs and crafts that reflect
local cultures. Sindhi plates and hot
pots are locally produced by jute,
shrub, date palms leaves and other
plant-based material and will serve as
beautiful addition to your kitchen
accessories.

Clay Utensils
Today most of our households have
plastic crockery- everything from
spoons to bowls to plates is plastic. An
age before that people were using
clay-made utensils such as coolers
(called matkas), which kept the water
inside cool and consumed lesser
energy. So yes a world without plastic
is possible and 'cool' (pun intended).

Newspaper Wrapping
Before raw meat came to our houses
in plastic shopping bags, people
bought their meat in newspaper
packaging and stored them in steel
boxes. A way more hygienic
alternative to the plastic packaging
that risks the spreading of harmful
bacteria into the food.
Glass Feeder Bottle
Not long ago our parents and their
parents used manufactured glass
feeder bottles, like the one in the
picture or with nipples at both end of
the bottle. It was dangerous and yes
the mother could not leave the child
unattended. But nevertheless, better
than feeding their child with plastic
chemicals that excrete in boiling the
bottle.

Banana Leaf Wrapping

You must have come across the news
which said "South Asians are reverting
back to the old way of packaging food
using banana leaves"? Yes in (g)old
times, plastic packaging was avoided
and even agricultural waste was
reused in innovative ways and luckily,
we are going back.

Jute and Coconut Leaf Baskets

Jute and coconut leaves baskets were
very normal to use when going out for
grocery shopping. Still commercially
available, such baskets were usually
homemade back in the days. Unlike,
plastic shopping bags, these do not
tear easily with a little more load.
 Record Your Waste

Would I have all the 'waste I need' for these practices?

Take out the waste cards from the envelope below and place them
on the number line based on your household's weekly waste
production to find out!

Waste Card Envelope

Reflections