letters
The Waste Land
CHENNAI Kangayam R . Narasimhan : In the US and Japan , people segregate garbage into three categories : decaying garbage , plastic and metal . They tie these up in separate bags and keep them outside their homes to be picked up by garbage vans ( The Mountains We Make , April 23 ). But scientific waste management is still a far cry in a land that swears by the Swachh Bharat slogan . Factors like rapid economic growth , the population explosion , the consumption boom , corruption , a lack of civic sense , and poor governance have contributed immeasurably to the problem in India . But with technological advances , there are now machines that can recycle waste and convert it into energy . Chennai alone generates more than 5,000 tonnes of garbage per day , and this can be converted into fuel through the plasma gasification and vitrification process , a technology developed by NASA . Under this technology , segregation of waste at source is not necessary . It is a complete recycling process that does not generate any harmful by-products , says US-based Solena Fuels , which represents NASA and is eager to enter into public-private partnerships with governments in India . Japan ’ s technology for recycling garbage should also be studied by state governments in order to stop this constantly ticking time-bomb .
HYDERABAD C . V . Krishna Manoj : “ Prodigality is the spirit of the era . Historians , I suspect , may allude to this as the Throwaway Age ”, wrote eminent American social writer Vance Packard long ago about his own country in his thought-provoking book The Waste Makers . India seems to be not far from realising this , given the enormity of our garbage menace , with only 25 per cent of the garbage collected being processed and the rest ending up in disposal sites ;
April 23 , 2018
salvaging from the latter , the humble rag-picker has been eking out a livelihood and ameliorating the problem .
Unrecycled plastic and aluminium foil packaging waste is contributing to mountains of trash . My local kirana shopwallah rues that he wastes Rs 3,600 a month to buy plastic pac kaging for his customers , with zero return on investment either in the form of a plastic fee or the bags themselves being returned !
Either we strictly enforce “ Extended Producer Responsibility ”, or ban plastic carry bags as did Kenya and Rwanda recently ; for the latter , we need the discipline to use reusable cloth carry bags , water bottles , biodegradable disposables ( from palash , areca nut leaves , bagasse ). More importantly , we must segregate and compost organic waste at the source , i . e the household / community level ( e . g . Alappuzha , Panaji , Mysore and Bob bili ), so that only non-biodegradable wastes would be left to garbage collection ; this could then be recycled for road laying , pyrolytic oil generation or rep l a cing coke in steelmaking ( using waste tyres ) . Short of taking these measures , no Swachh Bharat mission can ever purify our country !
LUCKNOW M . C . Joshi : It appears that there is no viable solution for solid waste management in Delhi — every scheme is deficient in some way . The three major landfills are overflowing , having exceeded their permissible parameters . The original idea behind creating these was to burn the waste in a furnace to produce electricity . Though Delhi has three waste-to-energy plants near these landfills , they have reportedly been lying almost idle since the trifurcation of the MCD in 2012 , with no means available to manage them . Environ mentalists find burning this waste ecologically hazardous . Then , there are researchers and specialists suggesting a method followed by several countries : the use of incineration plants that burn the waste to ash , which is then sold and put to other uses . According to one scientist , this method , which would reduce the volume of waste by over 70 per cent , is impossible to implement until the waste is segregated into dry and wet . This segregation has to be done at the source , and that is next to impossible in India . Waste-management is not Delhi ’ s problem alone , but one affecting the whole country . Alappuzha in Kerala is an exception ( Clean Up After Yourselves )— and behind its transformation was the unrelenting T . M . Thomas Isaac , who spearheaded the movement . Millions of Isaacs are needed to transform India into a clean country .
Amritsar Mohan Singh : It is very unfortunate that other than a few flashy slogans and campaigns , we are completely unprepared for managing waste . This issue is as important as one-liner On E-mail Satindra Paul Singh
These topless towers of refuse sentry-ing the capital are testament to India ’ s growth story .
8 Outlook 7 May 2018