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Sorting Gurgaon's garbage problem must start from home
In 1994, Surat in Gujarat was
struck by the pneumonic plague. The epidemic killed more than 50 people and
reportedly led to one of the largest internal migrations. People fled their
homes. It is believed that a combination of heavy monsoon rains, choked sewer
lines, and rotting garbage and animal carcasses created extremely unhygienic
conditions that caused the plague.
Naturally, people blamed the
Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) that had failed miserably in its basic
obligatory duty of maintaining sanitation and cleanliness in the city. An
embarrassed SMC, however, soon rose to the occasion, introducing a series of
initiatives and innovations in sanitation and health management. Today, Surat
is said to be the cleanest city in India.
However,
even after 20 years, the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) does not seem
to have learned any lessons from Surat, neither from the pneumonic plague nor
from post-plague actions. Waste management in Gurgaon is in a pathetic state.
Sanitation contractors have been allowed to rule for years in spite of
complaints against their performance.
The
door-to-door garbage collection currently in practice in Gurgaon is not only
crude and elementary but also inefficient and expensive. In a number of ways
the process also violates the norms laid down in the Haryana Municipal
Corporation Act, 1994, Chapter XV (HMCA) titled "Sanitation and Public
Health." The HMCA provides adequate laws on rights and duties of citizens
and the MCG in this matter. "The scavenging, removal and disposal of
filth, rubbish and other obnoxious or polluted matters" is an obligatory
function of the municipal corporation, but citizens must also act.
According
to a paper by the environment department of the Government of Haryana,
approximately 500-800 grams of solid waste is produced per person per day. So,
a family of four would produce about 2-3 kg of waste daily. The composition of
waste in an average domestic dustbin is paper/cardboard (30%); vegetable waste
(25%); plastics (10%); glass (8%); metals (7%); textiles (5%); miscellaneous
(15%). The percentage of paper/cardboard and plastics is increasing as packaged
foods replace cooking.
Household
solid waste can be divided under three broad categories: bio-degradable waste,
which includes vegetable produce such as fruit and vegetable peel and leftover
or stale food; partially-biodegradable waste such as paper and textiles; and
non-biodegradable waste, which are mostly metals, plastic and glass. The latest
kind is electronic-waste (e-waste), which can carry poisonous elements. E-waste
is not regular waste, but finds its way into the kitchen dustbins every now and
then, such as fused bulbs, CFLs and fluorescent tubes. This mixture of waste
eventually lands up in land-fill sites. When sent for recycling, its
heterogeneous characteristics makes recycling and utilisation complex,
expensive and sometimes dangerous.
The
solution to the problem of mixing lies in segregating. Ideally each category of
waste should go into a separate dustbin. To begin with, each home must be
equipped with a three-bin system, one bin for vegetable matter, the second for
semi-biodegradable matter, and the third for non-degradable. All three bins
together must be easy to carry, clean and maintain. If this is too difficult to
implement, one could at least start with two bins, one for decomposable organic
waste and the other for recyclable inorganic waste.
People who
have large gardens or those living in group housing societies with land
available in the campus - and can prevent access to stray animals such as pigs,
dogs and cats - can create composting pits in the gardens for organic waste. The
slight drawback of composting at home is that during the composting process,
the waste generates fugitive emissions which pollutes the air and can be
nauseating. Â
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