Heaps of Garbage Along the Roadsides

Friends, in my earlier article last week, I had described the pitiable conditions of cows and the human ragpickers. At this point, may I take this opportunity to express my deep sense of gratitude for those ragpickers?

In fact, these are the people to whom we should always be thankful. Why? Because they are doing a wonderful job for us. Through their act, they are reducing the volume of waste before it is taken away by the garbage trucks to the designated dumping grounds. Reduction in volume is one very crucial and important activity in waste management. But while doing so, just as the cows end up in consuming the plastic bags innocently, unknowingly, these poor ragpickers also are at very high health risks.

First, they do not wear any personal protection like masks, gloves, long boots etc. Why? Simply because they do not have money to buy such things! Secondly, they are unaware of maintaining their own personal hygiene. Due to this, they often fall sick and there are chances that they might carry the germs unknowingly and eventually spread infection in the community leading to epidemic like situations.

However, those poor souls have no choice because collecting saleable articles from the garbage heaps is the only means of earning their daily meals. Now coming to the secondary disposal of these garbage heaps from the streets to some other area designated as the dumping ground or garbage depot. In larger cities, they have created area wise ‘transfer stations’ where such garbage collected from the roadsides is brought by the workers before taking it to the dumping ground. At such transfer stations, this garbage is sorted out into varied materials as per its composition.

This act is essential and important as segregated waste can be easily ‘treated’ and disposed off without causing much harm to the environment. Of course, such transfer stations are not available everywhere. So, at such places, the heaps of garbage collected from different localities in a town or city are directly taken to a dumping ground.

A dump yard or a dumping ground is an open place belonging to an urban local body which is earmarked for collecting and storing the garbage. It is a final destination or abode for thousands of tons of garbage collected from all over the city mostly in unsegregated form. So, such garbage is a mixture of wet or biodegradable waste and dry or non-biodegradable waste.

Now, as the villages become towns and towns become cities which further expand into metropolitan as a result of rapid urbanization, selecting and earmarking a suitable site for a dumping ground becomes very difficult for the local civic authorities and there are multiple social, economical and environmental issues associated with it. I will discuss these issues and possible solutions through my next few articles in this column.

(The writer is an environment specialist. Views personal.)