Dump the Dump yard

During this week, I happened to visit Indiranagar 100 FT road a couple of times, and I was reminded of the Mankhurd - Thane road in Mumbai. The Kanpur tannery stench and specific odors came back, and my natural reaction was to reach out for my handkerchief and cover my nose.

For those of you who are not from Bengaluru, Indiranagar is a high street featuring the best brands in retail, investment banking, and all consumer businesses. The locality also houses traditional large houses, burgeoning startup office spaces, and a few IT parks. The stench was so strong that it lingered in the senses for a few more kilometers.

I learned that the reason behind this was two events happening simultaneously: 1. The sewage pipeline broke due to road expansion, and 2. The local garbage collection area, situated in the heart of the locality, had not transported the waste to the landfill in the city outskirts due to a long festive weekend, leading to an increase in the waste collected.

The world generates 2.01 billion tonnes of solid municipal waste annually and is expected to reach 3.40 billion tonnes by 2050 (World Bank Report).

There is a direct correlation between the growth in the economy and the growth in solid waste. A high level of consumption makes way for more input of waste. Large cities today are grappling with the high cost of maintenance. When you delve deeper, garbage collection and disposal cost is almost 5% on average, and in high-end communities, it goes up to 8%.

Landfills serve as the most preferred way of disposal, along with a free land disposal process; only a meager percentage is treated. There are three reasons for this:

1. Cost of transportation
2. Cost of capital expenditure in establishing treatment plants and operational expenditure to sustain them
3. Public participation in handling and segregating waste at the source

Mostly around 75% of the waste management (collection, disposal, treatment) is managed by the government, urban local bodies, with a few public-private entities and a handful of privately managed organizations working in this field.

As we aim to become a 5 trillion-dollar economy by 2047 and with the pace at which we are growing, being the most populous country, we will outgrow the present acreage of dump yards. The cities are expanding so rapidly that these dump yards are now in the middle of large habitats, posing health and climate risks due to harmful gases emitted from these dump yards.

The government introduced the Waste Management Act 2016 with the aim to address issues in waste segregation, treatment through technology, and conversion to usable energy, encouraging more private participation in this endeavor. There has been an emphasis on waste segregation at the source in households, commercial establishments, and industrial establishments.

The major sources are households, which comprise food waste, domestic hazardous waste (sanitary napkins, diapers, mosquito repellents, cleaning agents, and e-waste), and dry waste. There are clear guidelines on waste segregation to ensure proper disposal and recycling, avoiding everything going to landfills. Due to a lack of segregation, there have been horror stories of people losing fingers because glass was dumped in the same waste as others, among many such instances that are gory in detail.

The elite, which have a higher contribution to waste in urban areas, need to pay attention to the process of segregation. If you are reading this and are a part of any association, apartment complex residents whatsapp groups, you would have seen pictures of waste overflowing in corridors and the waste not getting segregated. Urban local bodies have been levying penalties on apartments to strictly follow this. The association members, who voluntarily manage the upkeep of the community, know the challenges of the cost of waste management, including resource issues to collect waste at the source. In spite of all this, only a handful of households segregate the waste into three buckets.

If you happen to be an early riser, during the morning walk, just look around the corridors of any apartment or colony; the dipstick of this issue is right there (including the dip that must be overflowing from previous nights party). There is a goal the government has set and has invested in promoting Swachh Bharat Mission - 2, launched in 2021, to make cities 100% garbage-free by 2026. The pace at which waste in large cities is growing, this goal is becoming distant. Still, segregation at the source is a significant challenge.

Indore has achieved the feat of being the cleanest city and is ranked the first city to do so. As you travel in big cities, the need to use a handkerchief to cover the odor is high. If you look around, there is garbage at every street corner, including the toniest addresses of India, from Bandra, CP, Tollygunge to Koramangala. This issue needs attention, action, and approach. We can't be dumping in the dump yard mindlessly, as there won't be a place left to dump further.

Segregation and waste management needs to be at the unit level. Recycling waste at the unit level adds up to significant savings in cost, environment, and resources.

World Bank Report: https://datatopics.worldbank.org/what-a-waste/