When it comes to waste management in India, little is the way it’s meant to be. Many municipalities simply dump the waste and claim these dumps are landfills. Landfilling should be done only for inorganic wastes and the rejects after processing. Apart from Solid Waste, open defecation and sullage water management are huge problems faced by civic bodies. Improper waste management causes public health and environmental hazards like climate change, air and water pollution, soil contamination, etc. As responsible citizens of this country we must think whether we can take initiative to clean up this mess and leave a better place to live for many generations to come. Every household must segregate the wastes at source as Bio-degradable and Non-degradable. We need to learn lessons from Sweden, which is a zero waste country and from Sri Lanka, which is segregating its waste and Bhutan where everybody is conscious to not pollute their land. Public must be warned as to what to do and not to do through media.
Vinod C. Dixit
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
