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NewsAsia 26 Aug 05 Zero-waste estate helps fight India’s growing garbage problem By Channel NewsAsia's India Correspondent Vaibhav Varma NEW DELHI : India is stepping up efforts to combat the problem of mounting household garbage in the metro cities. The government has come forward to lay down some waste management guidelines. The capital New Delhi also has its first zero-waste residential colony. Residents in the private residential estate used to churn out loads of garbage each day. Today the estate has been declared a Defence Colony, or what is known as a zero-waste area. It starts with segregated waste collected from individual households. The trash is divided into plastics, glass, inorganic and organic waste. The plastics and glass bottles are sent for recycling; the organic waste is emptied into pits, treated with cow-dung and covered with jute sheets, and the manure created used for gardening in the parks. The work is a joint effort by the residents' welfare association and Toxics Link, a non-government organisation keen on promoting conservation. Said Maninder Bedi, a resident of Defence Colony, "There is no garbage scattered anywhere. We have made two pits which are segregating all the garbage, and it's a garbage-free area now." Ravi Agarwal, director of Toxics Link said, "We had taken this issue up over a decade ago. We have been working on this in Delhi and nationally and with partners all over the world. The Indian government also in the year 2000 released a new law called the Municipal Waste Law which gives what is required to be done as a legal requirement. Earlier in 1998, it made a separate law for medical waste, saying that it has to be separated and also saying what can be done with it. "We have lots of industrial waste in this country and now we have a new law which might come up in next few months on electronic and electrical waste." Thirty million tonnes of urban solid waste are generated each year. Of this, 8.5 million tonnes come from India's nine metro cities alone. Growing urbanisation and industrialisation, increased use of packaged food and polythene are factors contributing to this garbage mountain. The challenge of waste-management lies in changing people's mindsets to practice the concepts of reduce, re-use and re-cycle. As of now, there are just three zero-waste colonies in all of India, but more residential areas in the metro cities have shown an interest in becoming a part of it. - CNA /ct links Related articles on Singapore: general environmental issues |
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