Care to imagine the amount of waste we produce every month, and then every year? As consumption increases, so does waste. Imagine dumps and more dumps around the cities, growing every day.
According to the CES, IIsc round 3600 tonnes of solid waste is generated in Bangalore EVERY day. This is pretty much the same of most big cities.
Much of the biodegradable waste generated is high in organic content and with humidity content becomes difficult to incinerate. A better option would be biomethanation where bacteria degrade the waste to produce methane, or even simply composting the waste.
However, not much is done. Most of the waste is carried out of the cities to be dumped in the suburbs, or if they make it to the dumps, they are forgotten and end up polluting the soil and water. No real land-filling (covering the waste with soil) happens and the biodegradation takes a long time.
A far cry from recovering wealth from waste or reducing to zero waste! For example, 70 percent of San Francisco's waste stream is being diverted from landfills through a combination of strategies including waste avoidance, waste reduction, composting and recycling. The city's goal is to divert 75 percent by 2010, and to achieve zero waste by 2020.
The city's composting program (see picture) is the largest in the US, and began accepting food and yard waste in 1999. The majority of the compost created goes to area vineyards, and the rest to small farms and landscape suppliers.
What does it take to make our municipal authorities aware of the immense wealth in the waste?!
Recyclable materials are taken to the material recovery facility at Pier 96 where over 182,000 tons of material is processed each year. Of course, as we know and are t the receiving end, much of the recycled materials are shipped thousands of miles to the developing world where cheap labour sorts them out with bare hands!
While authorities wrangle over whose responsibility waste is, or which method or which contractor is best, there are simple things each one of us can do to help in the waste problem.
How about reducing the waste generated in our homes? All it requires is to make just adequate food. Next, segregate the waste and use the organic part in a small pit in the garden. This is something that can be done even inside. All you need is one small pot with a lid. Dump your wastes there and cover with a thin layer of soil. After few days the manure it yields could help the kitchen garden immensely.
Approximately we generate 2.5 kgs of waste per average household. Think of what a good idea it is to use this for a good purpose and save our countryside from swelling dumps.
Check out this interesting post at Treehugger.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/what-really-happens-at-a-landfill.php
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