Garbage: How about we citizens doing our bit?

by a Special Correspondent

Continuing from last fort-night, when the focus was on our low sanitary rating, I today look at a major contributing factor: Garbage, which daily overflows on to our streets.

It cannot be anyone’s case that the ubiquitous piles of garbage are entirely the responsibility of the municipal conservancy agencies. Be it garbage or sewage, at one end is the public agency that has responsibility to manage and deal with them; but it is at the source that much could be achieved to reduce the volume of waste generation and to facilitate easier handling of the load transferred to the public system.

Plastic packing material forms a bulk of the material that we throw out. Shunning plastic bags might by itself substantially reduce the volume of garbage. Then, collection could do with smaller-sized receptacles and more number of them to ensure that no bin is outside easy reach. Recycling and re-use of various articles and packing materials and thinking many times before throwing them away would also help reduce the load on the public system.

Clothes and other fancy articles purchased by us are given by stores in large, colourful bags so that when we carry them the brand gets advertised. But their disposal becomes a problem. Perhaps, sellers as a matter of civic duty can make the bags simpler and smaller and less of a disposal problem. Buyers should decline bags difficult to dispose. Newspapers have been converted into carry bags. So why not we start using them instead of plastic?

Enhancing the capacity of the public collection and disposal system is not enough to tackle the dirt and toxins generated by an increasingly high-consuming society. It is also complex and capital-intensive, needing massive infrastructure. The strategy of reducing wastages at source – individual households and industrial and other institutional entities could be more impactful, less complicated and productive of dramatic results. As the proportion of people living in apartment complexes increases, it is easier to get collective compliance in garbage management and even to ensure that they convert into compost themselves instead of transferring it to the municipal system. In a different context, it was estimated that the daily generation of sewage was of the order of 675 mld compared to the effective available treatment capacity of 437 mld, an insufficiency in processing capacity of 35 per cent. Reducing wastage at the source by this percentage is achievable by just doing without plastic alone. With this, insufficiencies of treatment capacity and of an underground sewage network can be overcome without much capital cost.

A recent visitor to New Zealand cites how that country tackles garbage. Households are required to place the waste material, duly segregated, in bags at the gate for the collecting agency to pick them up. Specially marked paper bags for this purpose are issued by the municipality and made available at all stores for a price. A good part of the price goes to the collecting agency through the municipality. Thus, households are made to pay for this service according to the amount of garbage off-loaded by them and private collecting agencies are compensated by the number of bags deposited by them at the collection centre. Such innovative practices are aimed at establishing an accountability link.

Many international hotels have started asking their guests to voluntarily re-use bath towels for a second day and accept change of sheets at lesser frequency – all to save water. At homes, there is much scope for this and similar practices. An exaggerated sense of cleanliness, unconnected with the real need, results in luxurious use of an increasingly scarce, life-giving material made available to us at practically no cost – that is, water! Dripping pipes, luxurious hose baths to cars every day – a common sight, believe me, in large complexes where water is no one’s property – indiscriminate volumes of water for multiple baths every day, excessive use of detergents making recycling more difficult are all taking us towards critical water situations. Pricing water, such as to discourage wasteful use, recycling for garden use and for charging natural aquifiers may become inevitable in course of time. Brackish water is used in cities like Singapore and Hong Kong for water closets carried through a separate line. Garbage aside, we as citizens can contribute significantly to save water. This should be possible for us with the God-given sea by our side.

Responsible consumption and adherence to disposal norms in dealing with the aftermath of consumption make the job more manageable for municipal agencies. It is time we concertedly focused on our own roles, for a change, shifting the focus away from the usual targets.

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