LET's TALK RUBBISH

Let’s Talk Rubbish

I had thought of writing this article few months back but got lazy then. What prompted me again to write was a small incidence which I saw few days ago- garbage being casually thrown on the road out of a speeding Ford Icon.

“Fuck!” or “Shit!” or “Damn!” These could be the most humble words you may utter when you visit a landfill sight. The vulgarity of these words is no where close to the shock to you receive on seeing the tones and tones of garbage. I managed to visit one few months back and I wish I had written this article at that time. We (me, Ranjit –the head of NGO Janwani and Krishna –an environmental scientist) went to a place called Uruli, around 25 kms from Pune which is one of the landfill sites where the garbage from the city is dumped.

It was a pretty big area with piles of garbage scattered around. There was a path made for trucks to travel- these trucks get the garbage from the city and drop it there in the most unorganized manner. One could see plastic, metal, paper vegetable waste and all sorts of things you can imagine. The stench was overpowering like anything. We saw that there was smoke coming out from somewhere. This was basically because any landfill site is continuously smoldering because of constant decomposition process which is an exothermic reaction. It is an incessant source of pollution with half burnt methane producing carbon mono oxide. Oh sorry, I forgot to mention methane, which is present in high amounts in this area polluting the air and also acting as a green house gas.

Believe me up to this it is fine and tolerable. But it gets much worse.

We saw many small puddles of dark liquid around the garbage. It was leachate which is a black syrupy liquid which drains out of the garbage if it is not treated properly. It contains heavy metal contaminants (the main source being thermometers, batteries etc) and many other pollutants which, as I was told by Krishna has no way out and they ultimately reach our water table. He also told me that these pollutants lead to very scary skin diseases. He was telling me about a lady he had seen whose skin would come out if she scratched it. I could feel my body itching and shuddering to imagine that I could be drinking water which contains that tar like black poison. Leachate, sounds like leech, and when you know that you might be drinking it, feels like too.

As we were discussing how disastrous the situation could be for the nearby villages we saw a tractor which had come to that place. We asked the person who owned the tractor as to what he was up to. He said that the rotting garbage acts as good manure. Krishna started smiling on hearing this. “We all are eating poison!” He said.

Then we visited a waste-management plant which was very close to the site. We discovered that it will (the plant was not complete yet) convert the garbage into refuse derived fuel or RDF. Krishna again helped us understand what this RDF was and he told us that this is a very old, tried, tested and failed technology. Actually the technology works well for waste processing in developed countries because the calorific value of the waste is higher there as it contains less percentage of vegetable waste and more of plastic and paper (in developed countries everything sold is very well packed and that adds to the plastic and paper content of garbage). The fact that we are still trying to use an old technology and spending so much money to build a plant which is inevitably going to be a failure speaks volumes of the lack of foresight and planning in the government bodies. But I also observed that they were also trying to come up with some other method to trap the methane and use it for commercial purposes. That was the only positive thing I saw there and I pray that the attempt to do so is successful.

I also could not over look that there were many rag pickers who were working in such inhuman conditions trying to collect some of the recyclable waste which they could sell in the market. You might have seen such scene of people working on a landfill site in the celebrated movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. There are a few clips in the movie which show children working in landfill sites. But the actual experience of a visit was quite different.

As we were returning back, I and Ranjit were discussing that the place should be a compulsory school trip for all children. We were also joking that if one wants to get his kids interested in a boring subject like chemistry, a visit to this place could serve as just the right tonic. The place had everything- methane, organic pollutants, heavy metal contaminants and that too everything entering into your body. One would get interested purely for the chock value of the whole experience.

My point is that we need to be more aware and concerned. An escapist tendency won’t help. We people living in our ivory towers and driving in our Ford Icons may not be the first ones (the first ones will be people who live around that area) to get effected by the hazards resulting from such unconcern towards what we have ourselves produced; but we are not far either. After all, we, rich or poor, near or far, eat the same food, drink the same water and breathe the same air.

p.s.-I urge the readers to also read the artcle above it - "The solution" as it contains some tips on what we as a common man can do. It is a small article and will hardly take 2 minutes to read.