Day 38 – Q 5.Discuss various sustainable ways to address the menacing urban waste problem.
5. Discuss various sustainable ways to address the menacing urban waste problem.
खतरनाक शहरी अपशिष्ट की समस्या को हल करने के लिए विभिन्न तरीकों पर चर्चा करें।
Introduction:
With the ever increasing population and urbanization, the waste management has emerged as a huge challenge in the country. Not only the waste has increased in quantity, but the characteristics of waste have also changed tremendously over a period, with the introduction of so many new gadgets and equipment.
Body:
According to Down To Earth, towns and cities generate 62 million tons of municipal solid waste per annum. Only 43 million tons (MT) of the waste is collected, 11.9 MT is treated and 31 MT is dumped in landfill sites.
Waste management is very necessary in the present-day context for the reasons like
- To prevent pollution of the environment and its natural resources like air, water and land.
- To prevent complete exhaustion of the resources like minerals, water, etc.
- To produce energy which can be an alternative for the fast depleting fossil fuels and other conventional sources of energy.
- To make optimum use of the waste generated.
- For a better and sustainable future.
A waste management system consists of a front-end (collection and transportation of the waste) and a back-end (treatment, segregation, recycling, and disposal of the waste). In India, real problems lay at the back-end.
Way out:
- In-house segregation needs to be made popular.
- The rag-pickers who manually scavenge through waste to pick out a few ‘clean’ recyclables they can sell, need to be given better employment opportunities and modern equipment.
- Energy-from-waste is a crucial element of SWM because it reduces the volume of waste from disposal also helps in converting the waste into renewable energy and organic manure. Need to push for setting up compost & vermi-compost plants, bio-methanation plants, Waste to Energy plants in the country.
- Decentralised option for treating degradable urban waste – generated in households, institutions and markets places using technologies such as composting and bio-methanation. This will reduce load to landfills, compost can find immediate local market and even create green jobs.
- Along with involving private sector, integration of waste pickers/ rag pickers and waste dealers/ Kabadiwalas in the formal system should be done by State Governments.
- Need to strenghthen functioning of urban local bodies in waste management with adequate resources.
Conclusion:
With country likely to witness rapid urbanisation in coming decades civic bodies have to redraw long term vision in solid waste management keeping in mind 3R’s- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and rework their strategies as per changing lifestyles. They should reinvent garbage management in cities so that we can process waste and not landfill it.
Best Answer: John Nash
