Excerpt from Mumbai Mirror, compiled by Ajit Ranade on July 10, 2010: Read Full Article
There is something fishy about BMC’s approach of rewarding waste carters with generous ‘tipping fee’.
Mumbai produces six thousand tonnes of solid waste every day. This is the smelly stuff. There’s also debris from the frenetic construction which generates another two thousand tonnes.
The garbage is carted to four major dumping sites, at Gorai (near Borivali), Mulund, Kanjurmarg and Deonar. In those sites it is either buried or burnt or both. Some years ago, strange fumes started coming out of one of the landfill sites near Gorai, in Malad, spreading panic among the office towers which had sprung up on that site. In Deonar, garbage was being burnt all these years, causing smoke in surrounding areas of Chembur, Ghatkopar and Govandi.
The smoke led to many respiratory ailments for most residents living in houses surrounding Deonar dumping grounds, causing residents to form the Smoke Affected Residents’ Forum (SARF) in 1996. This forum filed a public interest litigation (PIL) against the BMC in the high court asking for relief. Mumbai’s garbage has long since exceeded the city’s capacity to burn and bury it. Now the emphasis is on waste treatment.
By 2000, there was a national policy on urban waste management for all India which reiterated the need to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Is it possible to think of zero garbage localities? Rather than carting away waste, it is best to reduce it at the origin itself. By separating wet and dry garbage, by composting all biodegradable waste, it is possible to reduce waste to a minimum.
