This seems to be a million dollar question. As we learnt from my last week’s article, open dumping of garbage has potential to spread diseases, potential to pollute air. Soil and water, occupies large space, can catch fire adding many obnoxious and toxic gases in already polluted surrounding air etc. Apart from these hazards, open garbage dumps also generate huge amount of methane. It is one of the “Greenhouse Gases” which are responsible for most pressing environmental problem of the 21 st century, i.e. ‘Global Warming’ and subsequent climate change.
In addition to all these issues and problems, open garbage dumps present very ugly sight so those are not acceptable. In short such a place loses its aesthetic appeal.
This can have adverse impact on the property that is in the vicinity. Property rates crash down causing financial losses to the concerned people. Now we can understand the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) mentality of the people and why they oppose having an open dump in their vicinity. Sometime this opposition becomes so strong that literally there have been riots over this issue in the past. Two incidences are noteworthy. In 2018, villagers of Mandki, at the outskirts of Aurangabad city did not allow the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation to dump the garbage from the city in their area. Residents of Padegaon-Mitmita villages where the AMC tried to dump the garbage protested very strongly.
When the authorities did not budge, the villagers burnt two garbage carrying trucks. The situation went out of control and the police force was called to control the situation. Villagers didn’t budge either and then the police had to resort to Lathi charge. The villagers of Devachi Uruli-Phursungi within jurisdiction of Pune Municipal Corporation had to face lot of hardships and health issues because of the dumping ground where thousands of tons of garbage from the city was being dumped every day. So, the villagers came together and staged protest to stop dumping the garbage there. Their protest turned violent occasionally resulting in casualties at times.
Thane Municipal corporation is facing space crunch and is unable to find a suitable place for dumping the garbage. A makeshift dumping ground at Bhandarli village has to be closed due to protest by the villagers. A few acres of land have been earmarked at Daighar village near Shil Phata. But the locals do not want this to happen in their backyard. These are just few representative incidences. This is happening almost everywhere across India.
Ok! We have understood the problems associated with open dumping of the garbage. But then what? Is there any solution to this problem? Of course, there is not just one or two, but multiple solutions to overcome all these issues. Since the problems related to generation of garbage and subsequent disposal are created by us, the humans, it is our responsibility to work on the solutions to solve these problems. We will discuss the possible solutions and remedial measures we can take to solve these problems in the subsequent articles. Till then, have a good weekend!
(The author is an environmentalist. Views personal.)
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