In the next 12 years alone, South Asia — and “mainly India” — will be the fastest growing region for waste generation, says a paper published today (Oct 31) in Nature. Garbage generation in South Asia will increase eight-fold by year 2100 to reach two million tonnes a day, bringing the region at par with the conglomerate of the world’s 34 most developed countries including U.K., U.S., Australia and Japan, which make up Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
By 2100 “India's total waste generation will be 70 per cent of all the high income and OECD countries put together,” Perinaz Bhada-Tata, co-author and solid-waste consultant in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, told this Correspondent.
While India's per capita waste generation rate will still be lower than most affluent countries, “the sheer size of its population and expected increase in urbanization and a rapidly-expanding middle class,” will account for the colossal amount of waste it generates in total, she added.
Trash is one heck of a problem in India. Every visit, I am even more shocked than before on the awful conditions on the streets, with garbage strewn everywhere. And the piles of rotting garbage, including food waste, which is a serious public health risk as well. As I wrote here two years ago:
I see that there are three reasons for rotting garbage piling up on the streets of Chennai:
- People casually toss them away, especially after eating fast foods at cafes and mobile stands
- Even when they responsibly throw them in the corporation bins, the dogs have a field day digging through the scrap and, in the process, a whole lot of trash ends up on the streets
The net result: there seems to be a permanent putrefied stink in the air.
- The rag pickers toss things out of the bins in their search for anything salvageable.
The Indian situation is, of course, a part of the global trend of urbanization and affluence. So, is there some point in the future that the rising trash production will peak and then decline? Well, you might want to hold your breath because of the stink that will be there for the rest of your life!
In 2013, if you’re someone who cares about the environment, your first and foremost concern is probably climate change. After that, you might worry about things like radioactive contamination, collapsing honeybee colonies and endangered ecosystems, among other contemporary environmental perils that fill recent news headlines.
But a number of researchers in the field are focused on a problem that has faded out of the news cycle: the piles of garbage that are growing around the world.
A recent World Bank report projected that the amount of solid waste generated globally will nearly double by the year 2025, going from 3.5 million tons to 6 million tons per day. But the truly concerning part is that these figures will only keep growing for the foreseeable future. We likely won’t hit peak garbage—the moment when our global trash production hits its highest rate, then levels off—until sometime after the year 2100, the projection indicates, when we produce 11 million tons of trash per day.
5 comments:
Couldn't disagree with you more.
It is never an either /or situation. Government action doesn't , and shouldn't, follow a sequence through a hierarchy of "more important" to "less important" tasks. It should act on virtually all fronts.
The same argument that you have made, has been made in the past against colour TV, against car production, against virtually everything deemed a "luxury". You may be too young to remember (:):)), but George Fernandes made precisely this argument when colour TV was first introduced during the Delhi Asian Games of 1982.
A closer analogy can be made when criticism was made against India's space program when it started and right through its existence. But this is the same ISRO which has launched communication satellites bringing both mobile phones and television to everybody, not to speak of innumerable other benefits.
The direct benefits of a Mars journey may not be obvious today. But these are actions which nobody else, but the government can do. The cost is tiny in the context of the whole country. It is important for a civilised country to be active in every form of human endeavour. Just as it should support museums, archaeology, etc although the same criticism can be levied against that too.
The issues of poverty, of trash, of toilets, are all real and pressing. The fact in today's India is that there is enough and more money to combat all of it - Want of money was a problem in the past; not today. The issues are one of policy, direction, and implementation. That must be tackled on a different zone. I can assure you that stopping the Mars mission will not add one centimetre to the progress on any of the more pressing problems that you have outlined.
Hmmm ... you seem to be favoring the Mars expedition because at least there the money gets something, whereas otherwise that money won't be spent on anything like the toilets or trash (I presume this would go to the corrupt politicians and Ramamirthams instead.)
We will both agree that scandalous diversion of public funds is India's worst ever problem for generations now. No disagreement there.
Having been a political junkie right from when I was young, no, I was not young back then. I boycotted watching the Asian Games for the same reason that I am pissed off at the Mars mission.
There is a huge difference between my opposition to the Asian Games (and later the Commonwealth Games too) versus Fernandes's opposition to color TV.
Fernandes was a moron and I am not .... hehehe ;)
Fernandes was a statist who had his own preferences on how the state should intervene in the economy (77 Cola, hello!) and his opposition was, thus, stupidly in favor of a different set of government intervention in order to curtail businesses and to redistribute the way he saw fit. Thus, as far as I can recall, Fernandes did not launch any big time agitation to bring clean water and sanitation to villages and towns.
In my post, and in most of my complaints about India's awful resource allocation decisions, my question has always been along the lines of why the fundamental issues--like toilets--don't get the priority they deserve.
I suspect that toilets, trash, clean water, etc., do not interest the organized, and educated, urban population. (In a way, I am (ab)using Michael Lipton's urban bias thesis.) Given the urban folks their color TV, their games, their whatever and keep them happy because typically in developing countries political unrest begins from cities, not from villages
(only the violent, commie outfits understand the numbers in villages and then (ab)use them in the name of helping the rural population.)
You talk about the byproducts of the Mars mission. But, we have a number of studies that show that the payoff from water supply and sanitation have some of the highest returns on the investment, both short and long term.
But, hey, at the end of it all, allocation of taxpayer money is the problem that citizens of a country have to deal with. It is, therefore, not my problem ... hehehe ;) Jokes aside, the guns v. butter decisions are for Indians to decide. If they are happy with this, well, so be it.
Oh no - you have every right to comment and have a view and I, for one, would respect your views enormously, even though some of my fellow Indians might bristle at the thought of an "outsider" criticising. Firstly you have such a close connection to India - you will forever be Indian , you are widely read, you have considered views , you articulate them well and your views are invariably sound. So please do not leave it to the citizens of India only !!
I might disagree occasionally with you, but your views are extremely sound and I wish more Indians would listen and understand.
hehehe .... while I might criticize India's politics or social practices here in the blog, I rarely engage in discussions on them, with the exception of a couple of Indians like you. Our debates are over the ideas and never about the person. So, no, I wasn't frightened of you ;)
My critiques of India can, and are, often viewed by Indian friends/relatives as betrayal and personal insults. Though, of course, they have no problems when I am equally (or more) critical of the US! However, in my blog, and in the earlier comment, when I write that it is for Indians to figure out how to allocate resources, I mean it. I often make that point in my posts--the guns v. butter decisions are for countries and their peoples to make.
the Economist (no, not Krugman the economist!!!) has weighed in on this very issue ... and is a synthesis of both our arguments:
"As an emerging middle-income country, India should easily have the means to pay for proper public health, as well as the odd jaunt into space. The pity of it all: it does neither as well as it could."
http://t.co/glas0VpVzu
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