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| Heaps of rubbish give off a stench that gets more obnoxious by the hour, and as the sun blazes down and the garbage decays, bubbly toxic slime oozes out... the foul odour turns even more offending and is enough to overwhelm the senses. Long term exposure has a negative effective on the surrounding environment and leads to serious health problems of people in the vicinity… © 2012 EarthSmiles.net . All rights reserved. Made from 100% recycled pixels. Overflowing garbage has made Kolkata a hell-hole, but can we cut back on the garbage we generate?
Bin it - not
By Divya Dhamija
| | | | Civic sense in the pits? Most of this Kolkata road is blocked by the garbage which grew from a small carelessly discarded bag of trash... | No, this isn't a description of municipal waste dump yard. This is a common sight (smell?) - open and usually unofficial garbage dumps, eyesores dotting Kolkata's landscape, and causing pestilence to breed and thrive. In Behala area, adding to the construction work going on, citizens are dumping more garbage here (there’s a mess already, ours won’t matter) and there making the place smelly and unhealthy. Commuters like Meera Dinda have to stand near the overflowing garbage dump to board buses. "Sometimes I have to wait for over half an hour for my bus. It is difficult to even breathe. There are days when the stench is so bad that I am on the verge of vomiting," she says. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is meanwhile reorganising its system of existing waste disposal by introducing new car compactors. Twenty of these new portable compactors will be bought this month at a cost of Rs 16 lakh each, in a project funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB) to improve the environment of Kolkata. A KMC official said that the vehicles will invite people to discharge directly into vehicles and the waste will be compressed and turned into a solid piece; later they will be dumped at Dhapa and the trash will not spilt all over, as the vehicle will be totally covered. Also the Compactors will be able to carry five times more waste than existing trucks and these will minimise the number of vehicles transporting waste to waste. KMC will also deploy 5000 fiberglass trash bins and place them in markets and elsewhere. Earlier experiments with metal bids proved a disaster, with bins disappearing – for the metal’s scrap value.  At least half of the contents of our dustbins could potentially be recycled. In addition, we could compost the 20% of vegetable peelings and other organic waste that we throw away. Despite this potential to recycle or compost around 60% – 70% of our waste, we are only recycling or composting around 12%. Homemaker Anita says, “ I was about to throw away my daughter’s old socks when she told me not to do so and to reuse it in a different way, like- making bottle covers out of it. It proved to be a creative idea.” Truly so, but few think that way. With limited time and our passion for new to replace the old, binning is become a bad, unconscious habit. The world is urbanising, faster than ever, and so are the quantities of wastes being discarded – but in few places as indiscriminately, as Kolkata. This attitude of citizens poses a challenge to city authorities whose duty it is to clean up the city garbage. Food for thought. Don’t bin it. The new mobile garbage compactor - if we recycle more, we'll need less of these! |
