CONCLUSION:

Plastic Waste Management has assumed great significance in view of the urbanisation

activities. Plastic waste generated by the polymer manufacturers at the production, extrusion,

quality control & lab. Testing etc., stages, as well as, by the consumers require urgent disposal

and recycling to avoid health hazards. Various strategies are being devised to mitigate the

impact of plastic waste in India.

Delhi
lags
way
behind
in
waste
dispos
al
http://www.hindu.com/2007/03/07/stories/2007030718420400.htm
Booming economy brings toxic hi-tech waste
http://www.financialexpress.com/latest_full_story.php?content_id=155801
India indifferent to e-waste contamination
http://www.hindu.com/2007/02/19/stories/2007021901050900.htm
After Vista, a deluge of E-waste to developing countries, Greenpeace warns
http://www.greenpeace.org/seasia/en/press/releases/after-vista-a-deluge-of-e-was
Waste Not Asia meet calls for ban on hazardous technologies
http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/145077/1/1893
Asia Near East (ANE) Computer Recycling and Disposal (E-Waste)
Preliminary Research Paper
http://www.dot-com-
alliance.org/resourceptrdb/uploads/partnerfile/upload/258/Ewaste%20Research
%20Final.doc
UN warning on e-waste 'mountain'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6187358.stm
Hazardous e-waste entering India as charity: experts
http://onlypunjab.com/fullstory2k7-insight-e+waste-status-10-newsID-197.html
Environmental Health Perspective of E- waste in India
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtongia/ICT4SD_Full_Book.pdf
‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: The 3Rs in South Asia’
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtongia/ICT4SD_Full_Book.pdf
Knowledge Partnerships in e-Waste Recycling
http://www.ewaste.ch/services/downloads/presentations/E-Waste_Brochure.pdf
E- Waste in South Asia
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtongia/ICT4SD_Full_Book.pdf
E-Waste in India
 http://cyberlawindia.blogspot.com/2006/08/e-waste-in-india.html
Waste-to-energy or waste-to-pollution?
http://infochangeindia.org/agenda5_14.jsp#top
The e-waste problem
http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20051121/management01.shtml
E-Waste Policy for India
http://www.assocham.org/events/recent/event_64/E_Waste_Recommendations.doc
E-Waste in India - System failure imminent – take action NOW!
http://www.noharm.org/details.cfm?type=document&id=1175
Waste Disposal Methods - Advantages and Disadvantages
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/disposal.html
Consortium for information on Plastic
http://www.envis-icpe.com/resourceconservation.html
Myths and realities about plastic
http://www.envis-icpe.com/mythsnrealities.html
World Environment Day : Workshop on Managing Hazardous Wastes June 5, 2001
http://www.cleantechindia.com/eicnew/world.htm
Eco-Echoes: An environmental Journal by Indian Centre for Plastic in Environment
http://www.icpenviro.org/magazines.asp#
Building Capacity for comprehensive medical waste management in Asia
http://www.awma.org/em/pdfs/2002/10/urbanenvironment.pdf
Hospital waste: Treatment Technologies
http://www.cpcb.delhi.nic.in/mar98iv.htm
Hospital waste: Draft Bio-Medical (Handling and Management Rules)
http://www.cpcb.delhi.nic.in/mar98iv.htm
Rethinking waste management in India
http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/apr/env-rethink.htm
Waste Management News
http://sdnp.delhi.nic.in/resources/wastemgt/waste-frame.html
Solid waste Management in India: status and future directions
http://www.teriin.org/envis/times6-1.pdf
Urban Waste And Rural Farmers: Enabling Low-Cost Organic Waste Reuse In
Developing Countries
http://www.cityfarmer.org/UrbanRuralWaste.html
Analyzing plastic waste management in India: case study of polybags and PET
bottles
http://www.iiiee.lu.se/Publication.nsf/$webAll/7502CC39F791FAA6C1256BE90031BE75
or
http://www.iiiee.lu.se/Publication.nsf/
$webAll/7502CC39F791FAA6C1256BE90031BE75/$FILE/Priya-Narayan.pdf
Performance of a local council in solid waste management: A study of Supervision
and Control of Human Resources
http://www.serd.ait.ac.th/ump/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20OP025.pdf
Sewage becomes the solution not the Problem
http://www.undp.org/dpa/choices/18june99/
The Future Municipal Solid Waste Treatment Technologies
http://www.apec-vc.or.jp/072298/072298c.htm
Urban Waste Management
 http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/waste.html
Changing consumption patterns in Human Settlements : Waste Management
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/fact-waste.html
Waste Disposal Methods : Advantages and Disadvantages
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/disposal.html
Community and Private Sector involvement in municipal solid waste management
in developing countries
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/swm-finge1.html
Sustainable Solid Waste Management in developing countries
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/swm-fogawa1.htm
Gender and Urban Waste Management

Rethinking waste management

While holistic solutions are available, municipalities have struggled to implement them without proper
planning and support from various ministries. Sanjay K Gupta reports.

April 2004 - There is no Indian policy document which examines waste as part of a cycle of production-consumption-
recovery or perceives waste through a prism of overall sustainability. In fact, interventions have been fragmented and
are often contradictory. The new Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules 2000, which came into effect from
January 2004, fail even to manage waste in a cyclic process. Waste management still is a linear system of collection
and disposal, creating health and environmental hazards.

Urban India is likely to face a massive waste disposal problem in the coming years. Until now, the problem of waste
has been seen as one of cleaning and disposing as rubbish. But a closer look at the current and future scenario
reveals that waste needs to be treated holistically, recognising its natural resource roots as well as health impacts.
Waste can be wealth, which has tremendous potential not only for generating livelihoods for the urban poor but can
also enrich the earth through composting and recycling rather than spreading pollution as has been the case.
Increasing urban migration and a high density of population will make waste management a difficult issue to handle in
the near future, if a new paradigm for approaching it is not created.

Developing countries such as India are undergoing a massive migration of their population from rural to urban
centres. New consumption patterns and social linkages are emerging. India will have more than 40 per cent, i.e. over
400 million people, clustered in cities over the next thirty years (UN, 1995). Modern urban living brings on the problem
of waste, which increases in quantity, and changes in composition with each passing day. There is, however, an
inadequate understanding of the problem, both of infrastructure requirements as well as its social dimensions. Urban
planners, municipal agencies, environmental regulators, labour groups, citizens’ groups and non-governmental
organisations need to develop a variety of responses which are rooted in local dynamics, rather than borrow non-
contextual solutions from elsewhere.

There have been a variety of policy responses to the problem of urban

solid waste in India, especially over the past few years, yet sustainable
solutions either of organic or inorganic waste remain untapped and
unattended. All policy documents as well as legislation dealing with
urban solid waste mention or acknowledge recycling as one of the ways
of diverting waste, but they do so in a piece-meal manner and do not
address the framework needed to enable this to happen. Critical issues
such as industry responsibility, a critical paradigm to enable sustainable
recycling and to catalyse waste reduction through, say better packing,
have not been touched upon.
Any new paradigm should include a cradle-to-grave approach with responsibility being shared by many stakeholders,
including product manufacturers, consumers and communities, the recycling industry, trade, municipalities and the
urban poor.

What is our waste?

Consumption, linked to per capita income, has a strong relationship with waste generation. As per capita income
rises, more savings are spent on goods and services, especially when the transition is from a low income to a middle-
income level. Urbanisation not only concentrates waste, but also raises generation rates since rural consumers
consume less than urban ones. India will probably see a rise in waste generation from less than 40,000 metric tonnes
per year to over 125,000 metric tonnes by the year 2030 (Srishti, 2000). Technologies, which can process organic
wastes have to be a mainstay to any solution. The Supreme Court appointed the Burman Committee (1999), which
rightly recommended that composting should be carried out in each municipality. Composting is probably the easiest
and most appropriate technology to deal with a majority of our waste, given its organic nature.

However, new and expensive technologies are being pushed to deal with our urban waste problem, ignoring their
environmental and social implications. It is particularly true in the case of thermal treatment of waste using
technologies such as gasification, incineration, pyrolysis or pellatisation. Indian waste content does not provide
enough fuel value (caloric value) for profitable energy production (and is unlikely to do so soon). It needs the addition
of auxiliary fuel or energy. Such technologies put communities to risk and are opposed widely. For example, the
United States has not been able to install a new incinerator for the past five years, while costs for burning garbage
have escalated astronomically with rising environmental standards in Europe.

While the more developed countries are doing away with incinerators
For developing countries, recycling of
because of high costs (due to higher standards of emission control),
waste is the most economically viable
developing countries have become potential markets for dumping such
option available both in terms of
technologies. Incinerators routinely emit dioxins, furans and
employment generation for the urban
polychlorinated by-phenyls (PCB), which are deadly toxins, casing
poor with no skills and investment.
cancer and endocrine system damage. Other conventional toxins such
as mercury, heavy metals are also released. Pollution control costs for
• Pyrolysis - Risky, but favoured
incinerators can exceed over 50 per cent of their already astronomical
cost, and an incinerator for 2,000 metric tonnes of waste per day can
cost over 500 million US dollars. Ironically, the better the air control works, the more pollutants are transferred to
land and water, through scrubbers and filters and the problem of safe landfill disposal of the ash remains.

Again, such measures go against the requirements of the Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules 2000, which
asks for source segregation of waste for cleaner composting and recycling. The lessons of incinerating Indian urban
waste do not seem to have been learnt, despite a disastrous experience with a Dutch-funded incinerator in Delhi. It
ran for just one week in 1984, since the calorific value of the fuel was less than half of that the incinerator needed.

Policy responses

At the national policy level, the ministry of environment and forests has recently legislated the Municipal Waste
Management and Handling Rules 2000. This law details the practices to be followed by the various municipalities for
managing urban waste. However, the response has been segmented and far from satisfactory.

First, it does not address mechanisms which will be needed for promoting recycling, or waste minimisation. Secondly,
there is no provision for any public participation, despite the fact that the Rules have been an outcome of public
pressure and the immense work done by non-government organisations and community groups in this area. Other
recent policy documents include the Ministry of Urban Affairs’ Shukla Committee’s Report (January 2000) the
Supreme Court appointed Burman Committee’s Report (March 1999), and the Report of the National Plastic Waste
Management Task Force (August 1997).

But the present rules and regulations are inadequate both in terms of assessing environmental impact of waste and
its economic and social implications. For developing countries, recycling of waste is the most economically viable
option available both in terms of employment generation for the urban poor with no skills and investment. Indirectly
this also preserves the natural resources going down the drains. Some local governments have taken initiatives to
burn waste through incineration or gasification for insignificant electricity generation at astronomical cost and with
dangerous environmental impacts, and which will take away the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of the urban
poor.

Urban poverty, informal recycling sector and livelihood questions

Urban poverty is inextricably linked with waste. In India alone, over a million people find livelihood opportunities in the
area of waste; they are engaged in waste collection (popularly known as ragpicking) and recycling through well-
organised systems. A substantial population of urban poor in other developing countries also earn their livelihood
through waste. It is important to understand issues of waste in this context. The informal sector dealing with waste is
engaged in various types of work like waste picking, sorting, recycling and at the organised level, door-to-door
collection, composting and recycling recovery. The municipalities in many developing countries do not do any
recycling recovery on their own.

Recycling of only some types of materials like plastics, paper and metals is not enough. A recycling research carried
out by Srishti revealed that many types of new materials mainly used for packaging are not, or indeed cannot be,
recycled in the low-end technology being employed. Besides, there are serious issues of poor occupational safety
provisions of the waste pickers as well as workers. This sector faces a severe threat from the new business model
approach to managing waste being promoted, without any attempts to integrate existing systems in them. There is an
urgent need to build upon existing systems instead of attempting to replace them blindly with models from developed
countries.

The Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation, as well as Agriculture, should develop the market for
compost, and if required provide subsidies for compost manure – first to provide organic soil nutrients to the farmers
and to solve the urban waste problem which continuously is polluting land through uncontrolled dumping.

India’s Green Revolution rescued the nation from famines, but left over 11.6 million hectares of low-productivity,
nutrient-depleted soils ruined by unbalanced and excessive use of synthetic fertilisers and lack of organic manure or
micronutrients. City compost can fill this need and solve both the problems of barren land and organic nutrient
shortages, estimated at six million tons a year. India’s 35 largest cities alone can provide 5.7 million tonnes a year of
organic manure if their biodegradable waste is composted and returned to the soil. Integrated plant nutrient
management, using city compost along with synthetic fertilisers, can generate enormous national savings as well as
cleaning urban India. There is scarcely any other national programme which can bring such huge benefits to both
urban and rural sectors.
The Green Revolution left over 11.6
Municipal response million hectares of low-productivity,
nutrient-depleted soils ruined by
unbalanced and excessive use of
At another level, the trend in cities in developing countries is to shift the
synthetic fertilisers and lack of organic
traditional municipal responsibility to private actors without considering
manure or micronutrients. City
the host of existing stakeholders. Also upstream focuses such as
compost can fill this need and solve
making producers responsible for packaging waste are lacking.
both the problems of barren land and
Excessive reliance is placed on technologies many of which are
organic nutrient shortages.
expensive with high environmental and economic ramifications. For
instance, installing an incinerator leaves the question of waste recycling
• Treating garbage right
- or toxic environmental impacts - unanswered.
• No wasteful business this!

Merely replacing one centralised system by another does not change waste behaviour on its own, or ensure
continued livelihood opportunities for those who live off waste such as waste-pickers. It also does not ensure that
economically deprived communities in metropolitan cities in particular (four metropolitan cities have nearly more
then 300,000 livelihoods) and 40 per cent of the urban poor have cleaner neighbourhoods. Often such replacement
has direct and hidden subsidies, mostly at the expense of poorer communities and the environment. For instance,
waste disposal sifting is often done in poorer neighbourhoods, leading to groundwater and other types of
contamination.

Though community projects are working well and fulfilling the greater objectives of environmental safety and natural
resource conservation, they are doing so under great economic and social stress. There is neither the recognition nor
support for such work by the different institutions from various stakeholders. Hence there is a need to bring the work
into the larger public space and review the rules and regulations both for enhancing and providing incentive to such
community waste management systems.
Composting: the environmentally and economically sustainable solution

Composting of city wastes is a legal requirement provided under the Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSW)
Rules 2000 for all municipal bodies in the country. But neither the central nor the state governments have yet
responded to show any kind of preparedness for it, nor have they been able to grasp it as an environmental and
social good that requires official support which can generate employment. The MSW Rules 2000 requires that
“biodegradable wastes shall be processed by composting, vermi-composting, anaerobic digestion or any other
appropriate biological processing for the stabilisation of wastes”. The specified deadline for setting up of waste
processing and disposal facilities was 31 December 2003 or earlier.

The production and sale of city compost is not the primary function of city administrations, but it will need to be
privatised for optimum efficiency and care. Several entrepreneurs have already entered the field and many compost
plants are in place, almost all on public land made available at a nominal cost. These companies are willing to wait for
the five to seven years payback on their investment, but are facing tremendous problems of producing compost from
unsegregated wastes, and of marketing and distributing their product. The government is indifferent to the problems
of these compost producers (i.e. a working capital crunch because of highly seasonal demand) and to farmers’ needs
(i.e., timely, easily accessible availability of affordable compost).

The Fertiliser Association of India, the leading lobby group for synthetic fertilisers, is focused on protecting the
fertiliser producers’ massive subsidies (Rs 142,500 million annually) for their chemical fertilisers – subsidies from
which the farmers do not benefit. This situation is increasingly coming under national debate. Just 12 per cent of this
annual subsidy would meet the one-time capital cost of city compost plants in India’s 400 largest cities (which include
cities with populations of over 100,000 people) and would be able to produce 5.7 million tonnes a year of organic soil
conditioners. Integrated plant nutrient management (IPNM) would also reduce the foreign exchange burden on the
Indian exchequer because bulk supplies of phosphorus and potassium must be imported. In addition, the government
of India spends Rs 43.19 million on phosphorus and potassium concessions alone. (Phosphorous is used to store
and transfer energy within the plant. It is used in forming nucleic acids (DNA, RNA). Potassium remains in tissues in
ionic form and is not used in the synthesis of new compounds as are nitrogen and phosphorous. Potassium is mobile
in plants and tends to move from older to younger, more active growing tissue.)

Emphasising IPNM using city compost, which can be produced all over the country can be a successful strategy if a
focused inter-ministerial effort is made. However, in spite of the fact that the Ministry of Agriculture renamed its
Department of Fertilisers as the “Department of Integrated Nutrient Management” a year ago, no policy changes have
taken place whatsoever. A proposed Task Force including the agriculture and fertiliser ministries may soon formulate
an Action Plan for IPNM.

The real economic benefits of compost use, like improved soil quality, water retention, biological activity, micronutrient
content and improved pest resistance of crops, are ignored by policy-makers and fertiliser producers. Fertiliser
producers do not yet realise that preventing soil depletion and reclaiming degraded soils would in fact increase the
size of the market and therefore, also their market share, which is currently threatened by globalisation and world
prices that undercut their own. Since most large fertiliser plants are government-owned, another threat is the
government’s intended policy of closing down loss-making public-sector enterprises and disinvesting from profitable
ones.

Preliminary surveys on municipalities' preparedness in implementing the MSW Rules 2000 show that the majority of
the cities are yet to embark on city-wide implementation of door-to-door collection of waste, source segregation,
composting of organics, recycling and creating engineered and safe landfill sites for residual waste disposal. The
municipalities were given three years time to make such preparations but most of them have not even woken up. This
is the regard given to the apex court’s verdict. Whether municipalities will enforce the MSW Rules 2000 and provide
cleaner and healthier cities is yet to be seen. For now, the risk remains that MSW Rules will become yet another
policy to gather dust due to government apathy. ⊕

Sanjay K Gupta
April 2004

Sanjay K Gupta is an environmental activist and works on issues of waste and sanitation. He currently works
with Toxics Link, Delhi, an environmental non-government organisation. This article comes to India Together
from Humanscape through Space Share, our content-sharing program for other publishers of public-interest
content.
Sources

 Municipal Solid Waste (Management & Handling) Rules 2000, Ministry of Environment & Forests,
Government of India, issues on 25 September 2000
 Patel. Almitra H, Using city compost for urban farming in India

 University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, All-India co-ordinated research project on dryland agriculture,
quoted in Down To Earth 15 November 2001.

• Write the author

• Waste
• Feedback : Tell us what you think of this page.
• Spread the Word: Send this page to a friend
• Support India Together: Make your annual contribution

NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 23: India's booming economy is producing mountains

of toxic electronic waste like discarded computers and televisions, but there are no
laws to regulate its disposal, a local environment group said on Friday.

Toxics Link said while the Asian giant's economy has been growing at eight per cent annually over the
last three years, it has also resulted in the generation of 150,000 tonnes of electronic waste each year.

An eight-month study by the group found that India's bustling financial hub of
Mumbai was the biggest source of electronic or e-waste, generating 19,000 tonnes
every year.

"Being the hub of India's commercial activities, the banks and financial institutions in
Mumbai generate huge amounts of e-waste," Ravi Agarwal, Director of Toxics Link,
told a news conference.

"But like the rest of India, there are no laws for its safe handling and this will lead to
serious health and environmental impacts."

Agarwal said the government had to regulate the management of e-waste by setting up
a central authority to collect all discarded electronic goods and put in place laws to
deal with disposal and recycling.

India's economic liberalisation that began in the early 1990s has seen hundreds of
banks, financial institutions, electronics industries, information technology firms and
call centres setting up operations across the country.
The booming economy has also led to a growing middle class--estimated around 300
million--which has more disposable income and an insatiable appetite for electronic
products.

"When electronics like televisions, PCs and efrigerators are discarded, it is the
informal sector made up of tens of thousands of people who collect it and then break it
down and recycle parts of it which can be sold," said Agarwal.

"They extract toxic-heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and chromium
which are sold for other uses."

These metals harm the development of the brain, kidneys and some are carcinogens which enter the
food chain through the air, water and soil.

Economy
Booming economy brings toxic hi-tech waste

REUTERS
Posted online: Friday, February 23, 2007 at 1931 hours IST
India indifferent to e-waste contamination"

Special Correspondent

Ministry must pay attention: Greenpeace

 Hazardous chemicals released during manufacture of semiconductor chips

 Study shows evidence of environmental contamination

NEW DELHI: Some of the biggest brands in electronics industries and their suppliers are contaminating rivers and
underground wells with a wide range of hazardous chemicals, according to a Greenpeace survey.

An analysis of samples taken from industrial estates in China, Mexico, the Philippines and Thailand has revealed the
release of hazardous chemicals during the manufacture of printed wiring board (PWB) and semiconductor chips, and
the component assembly. The highly toxic polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), widely used as brominated
flame-retardants, are used in a wide range of processes.

Explosive consumption

India is witnessing an explosive consumption of electronic goods and equipment, and is on its way to becoming the
choice destination for manufacturing.

"It is imperative that India pay heed to the alarm bells being sounded on the environmental and human health front.
It is time the IT Ministry realised its responsibility to regulate the toxic impact of this industry hand in hand with
promoting its growth," said Vinuta Gopal of Greenpeace India.

"In fact, even as governments worldwide, including China, recognise that toxic contamination from e-waste is a
looming environmental disaster, and enforce a phase-out of toxic chemicals, India does nothing. This inaction on the
part of the Government is nothing short of shocking, the IT Ministry and Ministry of Environment and Forests are
abdicating their responsibilities," she said.

The study, "Cutting-Edge Contamination," was undertaken to highlight the environmental contamination resulting
from manufacture of electronic equipment such as computers. Discharged wastewaters and sediments from
discharge pipes/channels were analysed near PWB facilities and one component assembly facility. Where possible,
treated wastewaters and treatment sludges/sediments from wastewaters and treatment plants were also collected and
groundwater samples from many sites analysed.

Evidence of environmental contamination by a diverse range of chemicals, many with known uses in this industry,
was found in each of the three sectors investigated. These included both chemicals incorporated in the products and
chemicals used in manufacturing processes, many with known toxicity to humans and other potential environmental
impacts.

Chemicals found
Some chemicals were found in waste streams from more than one sector, including some toxic and environmentally
persistent groups such as PBDEs, phthalates used as plasticisers (softeners) in plastics, certain chlorinated solvents
and high levels of some heavy metals.

Other chemicals found in waste streams and groundwater samples were specific to each of the manufacturing
sectors, for example brominated flame-retardant tetrabromobisphenol-A (TBBPA) and photo initiator-related
chemicals at PWB manufacturing sites.

Flame-retardants are chemicals added to a wide variety of materials, including casings and components of many
electronic goods. Two widely used groups of chemicals are PBDEs and TBBPA.

The stench and ugly sight of garbage dumped on the roadside, sometimes overflowing
from drains or floating on the surface of rivers, is not at all uncommon in India. It is
disgusting, until you get used to it and begin to ignore it.

Where Does Your Garbage Go?

India’s garbage generation stands at 0.2 to 0.6 kilograms of garbage per head per day.
Also, it is a well known fact that land in India is scarce. The garbage collector who comes
to your house every morning to empty your dustbins inside his truck, takes all the
garbage from your neighborhood and dumps it on an abandoned piece of land. Garbage
collectors from all parts of the city meet there to do the same. Such a land is called a
landfill.

India’s per capita waste generation is so high, that it creates a crisis if the garbage
collector doesn’t visit a neighborhood for a couple of days. Typically, each household
waits for the garbage boy with two or three bags of trash. If he doesn’t turn up, the
garbage becomes too much to store in the house. The household help or maid of the
house will then be instructed to take the bags, walk a few yards away – probably towards
the end of the lane – and dump the bags there. Seeing one household, all the others in
the neighborhood immediately follow suit. This land, at the end of the lane, soon
becomes the neighborhood’s very own garbage dump – a convenient place to dump
anything if the garbage boy doesn’t show up. Of course, when the quantity of the waste
becomes too much to bear then diseases are feared, the residents would march up to
their colony’s welfare association and demand for the waste to be cleaned up at once.
The waste will then be picked up from there and dumped in another piece of land – this
time further away from the colony – probably in a landfill.
People in India also litter excessively. The sweeper again sends all this garbage to the
local dump, from where it finally goes to a landfill.

At the end of the day, it is safe to say that all garbage gets dumped in a certain piece of
land (called a landfill).

Why is Waste a Problem?

As already mentioned, waste disposal in India simply involves rounding up the waste
from different parts of the city, and dumping everything in a landfill. Once a landfill is
completely occupied, a new landfill is discovered in a different part of the city. The
Energy Research Institute estimates that 1400 sq. km. of land would be required by
2047 for municipal waste!

Cities those are fortunate enough to have a river passing through them, have an
additional dump for all their garbage. The state of the Yamuna River in Delhi is a
testimony to this fact. The river practically doesn’t flow at all. Expansive white deposits
can be seen on their surfaces that prevent the flow. The deposits are nothing but toxic
wastes that have reacted with the water. Practically no living creature lives in this
section of the river.

The landfill method is simply one that creates land pollution (and in some cases, ground
water contamination). The waste is not subjected to recycling, composting, or any other
form of environmental treatment. Hazardous toxic wastes lie side by side with the
organic wastes in the landfill.

The waste disposal issue has been given a small budget by the Government. Limited by
this, the municipalities are ill-equipped to deal with the massive amounts of waste they
collect everyday. Another problem is their inefficiency in collecting the waste. Currently,
their efficiency is only about 50 to 80 per cent. The common man living in a populated
urban city can tell you that the garbage boy seems to take holidays every now and then.
The real problem is that he has collected so much that he can’t store any more trash in
his truck for the day, which is why he seems to take a “holiday” and does not come to
your house. On the one hand, we can blame the municipality for not having enough
resources to collect all the garbage. On the other hand, we ourselves are to blame for
generating such huge amounts of garbage.

What Can be Done About it?

Firstly, it is imperative on the part of municipalities to separate the biodegradable from
non-biodegradable waste. Biodegradable wastes can then be subjected to composting,
which is a process of converting plant and animal wastes to humus by soil
microorganisms. Humus enhances the fertility of soil.

Non-biodegradable wastes then further have to be categorized on the basis of their

toxicity. Toxic wastes, when dumped in the land, may eventually contaminate and
poison ground water. They have to be stored in tightly sealed underground containers.

Wastes like plastic, metal, paper etc can also be subjected to recycling. In some ways, the
waste can actually serve as a resource!

Of course, all of the above requires a hike in the waste disposal budget. The
municipalities need to be taught the technologies described above so that they can deal
with the waste effectively.

As individuals, we need to realize that we do generate quite a lot of waste – we dispose

of containers that can be reused and we throw away papers that can be recycled. It is
important to reduce our wastage of resources so that we don’t pressurize our weak waste
disposal system.

Harshini Shanker

Too Much Waste

All of us open biscuit or chips packets, eat the contents and casually discard the plastic
covers without giving a second thought to where they might go or what might actually
happen to them. Once the dustbins in our houses are full, we empty them out onto the
streets or hand them over to men who drive garbage trucks, but where does all of it
really go after that?

Usually, waste goes to large, empty yards on the outskirts of cities. In Chennai, a lot of
the waste gets dumped at the Palikaranai marsh, a fresh water swamp. It is declared as a
reserve forest area and is home to many flora and fauna. But the dumping of solid waste
and the discharge of sewage are causing the marsh to shrink. Additionally, the people
who live around the marsh are also badly affected. The toxic waste is extremely
hazardous to their health. Children from these slums are often born with birth defects
and the people develop numerous other diseases inhaling these substances throughout
their lives.

The problem of waste is not only limited to where the waste is finally dumped, but also
to the treatment of those made to segregate it. Rag pickers are usually children from
a pooreconomic background, and anyone will spot them digging into the street dustbins
trying to gather and segregate waste. A lot of these children handle the toxic substances
without being given any gloves, and they are therefore highly susceptible to harmful
diseases. Rag pickers are also treated badly by the government and the general public,
and are hardly paid enough; yet they do such an important job for society.

Dumping of waste carelessly obviously impacts the environment and the people in a big
way; yet it is quite hard for us to come up with an easy solution as to where it would all
go. However, we can try to minimize the amount of waste produced as much as possible.
Very simple tasks like carrying cloth bags while going grocery shopping instead of
accepting the plastic ones given in stores, or attempting to reuse items like glass bottles
or plastic containers instead of discarding them after one-time use can help reduce the
amount of waste each individual house produces by quite an amount. Individuals can
segregate their own waste in their houses into bio-degradable and non-biodegradable
items. Kitchen waste (like vegetable peels) can be combined to form manure, which is
very rich for plants.

There are solutions for improvement that can be implemented in the whole city as well.
For instance, large colour-coded bins can be placed in each area. These bins can be for
plastics (recyclable and non- recyclable), organic waste, paper, and so on. The people
who collect the waste or the residents themselves can come and discard their waste in
the appropriate bins, which makes the rag pickers’ job much easier. The Chintan model
of waste disposal, which has worked out very well in Delhi, can be implemented in a
whole city. It primarily focuses on rag pickers segregating the waste for individual
households. The working conditions of the rag pickers are also taken into consideration.

Unfortunately, many don’t see the importance of this issue. It is easy to be ignorant of
what directly does not concern us. But in addition to impacting the environment and the
welfare or rag pickers or people who live around these dump yards, waste can also affect
us. If water bodies and ground water is polluted, the water that reaches our taps is going
to be contaminated. The lifestyle trends of today emphasize more and more on the
concept of ‘use and throw’ and the amount of waste being produced is so much more
now than it was many years ago. It is essential for us to stand up and take responsibility
for our environment by doing what little we can do at an individual level.

Niyantri Ravindran

Image Source :[