Garbage Dumping

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? Indias 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. Indias per capita waste generation is so high, that it creates a crisis if the garbage collector doesnt 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 doesnt 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 neighborhoods very own garbage dump a convenient place to dump anything if the garbage boy doesnt 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 colonys 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 doesnt 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 cant 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 nonbiodegradable 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 dont pressurize our weak waste disposal system. Environmental Problems Landfills Cause The environmental problems caused by landfills are numerous. Landfills produce emissions, substances, which are often toxic, that enter the air or water. They may contribute to the depletion of the Ozone layer. They can harm wildlife. There are two areas of emissions considered the largest concerns: atmosphere emissions and water emissions.

Atmospheric Emissions

Emissions from landfills enter the atmosphere. When they do, they can travel anywhere. Main problems here include noise emissions, dust emissions and bio-aerosol emissions. These are often a cause of the operation of the landfill, but still contribute to the larger environmental problem. In addition to these, one of the largest concerns is the production of landfill gas. Over time, the garbage in a landfill breaks down. It creates a chemical mess, filled with toxins entering the atmosphere as gases. Landfill gas occurs virtually as soon as a landfill comes about and may continue to be in production for hundreds of years. Water Emission The atmosphere often takes a hit when it comes to landfill gases, but water is also a very real risk. The initial problem is with watercourses. This includes everything from the ditches located near the landfill to the rivers and streams miles away. The rain will wash over the landfill, allowing debris, but more commonly toxins, to wash into these watercourses. In addition, water emissions may happen at a much lower level. If groundwater is polluted at a landfill site, the water can penetrate into the strata below the surface of the Earth, polluting some of the most important sources of fresh water. Additional landfill environmental problems Emissions are not the only types of problems associated with landfills. A closer look can show why so many much needed changes are so difficult to come by.

Landfill Fires: Landfill gasses, and the shear amount of landfill waste, can easily ignite a fire. Fires can be difficult to put out and contribute to the pollution of the air and water. They can also potentially destroy habitats nearby if not controlled soon enough. Decomposition: Some landfills get filled and then covered over to allow decomposition to take place. Yet, it is not always accurate how long it will take some items to decompose. Products that are natural, such as wasted fruits and vegetables, will decompose within weeks while items like baby diapers, soda cans and glass bottles may take as long as 500 years to decompose. Landfill Leakage: The design of many of the newest landfills keeps many of these leakage problems at bay, but there are still risks. Landfill gases and waste materials may leak from the landfill. This can lead to environmental problems including toxic exposure to water.

Voluntary Systems in Action to collect Garbage and Rehabilitate Garbage Collection in Chennai, India The issue of garbage collection has been a nightmare in a country like India with a population of over a billion people. Government-run municipal corporations work on subsidized labor and the system is hard to sustain. It is common to see garbage strewn on the streets, causing serious health hazards for the populace. Such a state of affairs has traditionally been a reason to abuse the government of the time. However, one city took a different approach Chennai (then called Madras). Concerned entrepreneurs decided this was too important to leave to the government. In 1989, they formed EXNORA (EXcellent NOvel and RAdical), an organization dedicated to generating ideas for civic improvement. Their first act came when the corporation of Chennai decided to experiment with hydrocontainers. For this to succeed, garbage would have to be placed directly in the containers so corporation workers could directly load them onto trucks. These containers were placed at the end of each street so that garbage could be directly placed in it instead of being strewn around a dump. However, residents found it inconvenient to haul their garbage all the way to the containers. Meanwhile rag pickers were known to create a mess on the roads by picking at the garbage in the regular corporation bins. The entrepreneurs at EXNORA found this to be a great opportunity. They took a loan from a bank to buy a tricycle cart and also pay a monthly salary of Rs. 650 ($14.44) to the rag pickers, who were now called street beautifiers. The street beautifier would collect garbage into the cart each morning from the homes on the street and put it in the container, and thereafter sweep the street. In return, every household on the street would contribute Rs. 10 (22 cents) per month toward the salary of the street beautifier. This experiment was extremely successful on the street it was tried on. It was soon replicated across the city. As of 1999, there were 900-950 civic EXNORAs functioning across the city. Each body is self-managing. The success in the city of Chennai has led to the adoption of this model in other cities, and United Nations has picked this up as a stellar model for developing countries. Today, EXNORA has moved beyond garbage collection to environmental protection and management, discovering entrepreneurial opportunities at each step. EXNORA seems to be a textbook case of a voluntary system in action. First, a self-sustaining business model drove it. Second, it involved participation of society at a local (street) level without the application of force. If enough people did not join, then the model would not sustain, and their street would not be clean. Public Toilets Sulabh Shauchalaya Mahatma Gandhi had spent a lifetime trying to encourage cleanliness, and is known for his remark, Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Sixty years after Indias independence, cleanliness has been a quixotic goal. One of the biggest problems has been the lack of toilet infrastructure,

leading to defecation in public places. This poses serious health hazards and has bogged successive governments. Laws that require all houses to have toilets have been ineffective and impractical. The usual practice was to have human scavengers carry the faecal matter and dispose it some distance away. However, the last quarter century has seen a big movement change the landscape of toilet technology and sociology. A sociologist by training, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak took it up as his mission to provide dignity to less-privileged members of society, both the ones who didnt have access to toilets and the ones who acted as scavengers. He championed the adoption of two-pit pour-flush toilet, an affordable, safe and hygienic system for the disposal of the human waste in absence of sewers and septic tanks. The two-pit-pour-flush toilet requires far less water than the traditional septic tank (two liters per use). One pit takes four to five years to fill up (for a family of five) and at that point, the family switches to the second pit. During this time, the waste in the first pit naturally transforms to fertilizer. Dr. Pathak proceeded to found Sulabh International, which specializes in the construction and maintenance of public toilets that operate on a pay-per-use model. One-use costs Rs. 0.5 (1.1 cents), and monthly passes are sold for Rs. 20 (44 cents). Women and children can use the services for free. Bath services are also provided for a cost. 60% of the operational revenues are used to rehabilitate scavengers by providing them vocational training and allowing them to reintegrate into mainstream society. Of late, Sulabh has further expanded into extracting biogas from community toilets through anaerobic decomposition of the waste. Biogas is useful as an alternative fuel for cooking or producing electricity. The movement has been scaled up in the last decade and is a big way of providing sustainable sources of electricity to remote villages. The United Nations Center for Human Settlements has recognized Sulabhs sanitation system as an urban best practice6. Sulabh is again a classic example of using the philosophy of voluntary social systems to bring about desired change where traditional regulatory means have failed. To quote Dr. Pathak, .. my greatest sense of satisfaction lies in the fact that the Sulabh International Social Service Organization has constructed more than 6,000 public toilets in slums and public places and maintain them on pay-and-use basis without putting burden on the Public Exchequer, thereby liberating some 50,000 scavengers from the sub-human occupation of cleaning excreta of others and carrying it as head load. It is easy to mistake Sulabh for a charitable institution. It is really a well-implemented financially viable voluntary system that has never relied on charity for its operation. Such implementations lead credence to the hope that voluntary systems might give our societies solutions to troubling problems.

Solid Waste Management

In the new system of SWM adopted by Exnora, the households shared the cost of employing a rag picker, (renaming him street beautifier). He was given a monthly income and provided with a tricycle cart and a uniform. The Street Beautifier went from door to door collecting the waste stored inside the houses in the tri-cycle cart and transported it to the transfer stations (secondary collection points), from where it was cleared by the Municipal Corporation. The cost per month per household came to about Rs.10/-. This new system ensured that waste was not disposed onto the streets, or even into the Municipal dustbins, and hence ensured Cleanliness and hygiene of the surroundings. Rehabilitation of the rag pickers and integrating them into the main stream, by providing employment opportunities and dignity of labor to them. Peoples participation in the system and thus their responsibility toward their environment.

The success of the new system caught on in several other places in the city and within the first few years of its founding, Exnora had around 1000 Civic Exnoras, functioning successfully. New Problems This improved primary collection system was soon found to be increasing the pressure on secondary collection, which the local bodies were ill equipped to handle. This resulted in garbage accumulation in the transfer stations. Exnora also identified the problems of disposing wastes in dumping grounds. The two dumping grounds for the city - Perungudi in the south and Kodungaiyur in the north) - were prime wetlands slowly covered by the citys garbage. This resulted in the leacheate polluting the soil and the ground water and air pollution threatening the human and animal life in its surrounding areas. This forced Exnora to realise that collection and disposal of garbage meant a mere relocation

and not management of waste. Exnora then shifted its focus from mechanical collection and disposal, to innovation of new methods of waste recovery - such as composting of organic waste at household level. Vermicomposting was propagated amongst Civic Exnoras, in a sincere attempt towards waste recycling. Very soon this became a common practice in many Exnora areas.

Sulabh Shauchalaya

Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak studied various designs of latrines and work done in this field in India and abroad and developed Sulabh Shauchalayatechnology, which is technologically appropriate, socio-culturally acceptable and economically affordable. It is low cost, requires only two liters of water to flush and can function even where enough water is not available. The Sulabh system of Twin Pit Pour Flush (TPPF) toilets uses about two liters of water per flush as opposed to the 14 liters required by a regular toilet. It alternately deposits waste into two pits. The first pit can be used by a family of five for up to four years. When the first pit is full, the family can switch to the second pit, which also can be used for about four years. Over that period, the waste in the first pit is gradually and naturally converted into a rich material that can be removed and used as dry, powdery fertilizer. Each pit is about one and a half meters deep and lined with a lattice of bricks. The gas formed by the decomposing waste is absorbed into the surrounding soil, eliminating any foul smell. Experiments conducted in India have established that bacteria from the pits travel no more than three meters vertically, and extend less than one meter downward. The design of the system and the pits can be modified as needed to protect water sources and underground soil. A Sulabh system can be built for as little as Rs.500/- a little more than $10, which makes it an affordable option even in the poorer regions of India. In urban areas that have costly sewer systems, Sulabh systems have been adopted as community toilets, often with an innovative modification: the attachment of a biogas plant. Through these plants, human waste produces nutrient-rich water that can be used for irrigation, and biogas that, when mixed with diesel fuel, can power electrical devices like streetlights. Biogas Sulabh systems have come to be popular in hospitals, schools and hotels.