The key to efficient waste management is to ensure proper segregation of waste at source and to ensure that the waste goes through different streams of recycling and resource recovery. Experts believe that India is following a flawed system of waste disposal and management. However, almost all municipal authorities deposit solid waste at a dumpyard within or outside the city haphazardly.
Solid Waste Management (SWM) is one among the basic essential services provided by municipal authorities in the country to keep urban centres clean. Only 43 million tonnes (MT) of the waste is collected, 11.9 MT is treated and 31 MT is dumped in landfill sites. Over 377 million urban people live in 7,935 towns and cities and generate 62 million tonnes of municipal solid waste per annum. With rapid urbanisation, the country is facing massive waste management challenge. Specific forms of waste are the subject matter of separate rules and require separate compliances, mostly in the nature of authorisations, maintenance of records and adequate disposal mechanisms. The increase in waste generation as a by-product of economic development has led to various subordinate legislations for regulating the manner of disposal and dealing with generated waste are made under the umbrella law of Environment Protection Act, 1986 (EPA ). These principles mandate municipalities and commercial establishments to act in an environmentally accountable and responsible manner-restoring balance, if their actions disrupt it. Her latest book is "Carrying Water as a Way of Life: A Homesteader's History.Waste management rules in India are based on the principles of "sustainable development", "precaution" and "polluter pays". You see, once a town loses its dump, before you know it, everything will change.ĬURWOOD: Linda Tatelbaum lives in Appleton, Maine, and teaches English at Colby College. The fiscal year sets the schedule, now that we have to pay to get rid of our junk. But starting this year, Town Meeting will be held in June, when we're all too busy for jawing. All we have left now to heal our differences is Town Meeting in March, when cabin fever drives us to crave company. Oh, for the days when the dump satisfied our hunger to hang out together. For every plastic bag with an official "paid for" sticker sitting responsibly, even primly, by the roadside, there's a field dotted with forlorn junk in search of the lost landfills of yesteryear. The only outlet for stress is the carefree tossing of junk from moving vehicles. Now, some of us push for community composting and conscientious consumerism, while others resist. The dump used to be where we buried our differences. And now here we are again, crushing our cans and bundling our newspapers.ĭealing with what we don't want to deal with has an emotional cost as well. But they can't convince the old-timers, who hoped to put hardship behind them forever after World War II. It's easy for newcomers, who came here intending to live by old ways. Now, instead, we sip our solitary coffee and watch a truck haul away our household trash at a dollar a bag. But the pile grew higher, the abyss shallower, until finally you pitched your stuff up and watched it roll back down to land at your feet. When the state outlawed burning, we began to bury the stuff. We were too busy socializing as we jettisoned our junk to notice the pit growing shallower, the pile growing higher. In the good old days we backed our loaded trucks to the edge of the abyss. Now there are consequences to every action. A town without a dump loses its innocence.
It loses more than the ability to bury what it doesn't want to deal with. TATELBAUM: When a town loses its dump, it loses more than the communal gossip center. But as commentator Linda Tatelbaum found out, losing the town dump can make change come a whole lot faster. CURWOOD: Change can come slowly to the places where we live, and to small towns it often comes very slowly.
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