A dirty subject

As anyone who lives in Mumbai or Delhi knows, there is a great rivalry between the two cities on many fronts. In the last couple of weeks, the financial capital of the country was on par with the political capital of the country in an area Mumbaikars could have done without: pollution. Between January 29 and February 3, the city’s Air Quality Index (AQI) moved between 304 and 341, which is termed “very poor”. As a result, every day, a pall hung over the city and the smog was almost palpable.

Until now, Mumbai has escaped the notoriety of Delhi’s pollution levels, not because of any planning or efficiency of its municipal corporation, but because of its geography: the stiff sea-breeze which wafts across the city day and night with varying intensity, acts as a sweeper, taking polluting elements in its arms and blowing them away. Delhi is land-locked and has no such luck (it does get strong winds in the summer, which makes matters worse by covering the city with sand and dust).

However, this time Mumbai was not so fortunate: there was a large fire at the Deonar dumping ground (an inelegant phrase, but quite appropriate for the place), and the fire just wouldn’t go out. Smoke rose up into the sky and spread slowly all over the place. We either stayed indoors, or coughed our lungs out.

It was an accident waiting to happen. The wonder is that it took so very long before it exploded in our face. “Exploded”, of course, only in a manner of speaking, because the fire started slowly — some reports say with a single lit match, and took its own time to build up.

Again that is luck: the waste dumped at Deonar is not segregated — so you have dry and wet waste sitting in close proximity to building debris, which would explain why the conflagration was slow to build up, and when it did, was more smoke than fire.

The bare statistics of Deonar will stagger you — the waste dumped there every day is neither segregated nor processed, which is why “dump” is the right word for it. Mumbai is said to generate 9,500 to 11,000 metric tonnes (mt) of waste daily, of which about 4,000 mt goes to the dumping ground at Mulund, 1,000 mt goes to Kanjurmarg, while the rest (5,000 mt or so) reaches Deonar. The Deonar ground area is 120 hectares, which seems large, but isn’t if you pile on 5,000 mt rubbish on it day in, day out. One estimation (although I have no idea how anyone can calculate these things) is that if the unprocessed garbage is stacked up, it will be as tall as a 20-storey building. For a stinking city, it will be a most appropriate monument.

Deonar has been around. In fact, it is Mumbai’s oldest landfill, having been used for this purpose since 1927. It won’t be long before we will be celebrating (if that’s the right word), its centenary. Activists who have been fighting to have it shut, claim that it reached saturation point in 1995. What do officials of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) say A national newspaper reported one, who shall deservedly remain anonymous, “We can’t do much until garbage from the city decreases.” Obviously, BMC policies are based on forlorn hopes.

If anyone is interested in dirty figures, the per capita generation of waste comes to 450 grams a day. At less than half a kilo (and don’t forget, this average includes construction debris, vegetable waste from markets, etc) that figure doesn’t seem excessive at all. A further break down of the total figure tells us that 54 per cent of the total waste is wet waste, 15 per cent dry waste (wood, cloth, etc), 12 per cent sand, stone etc, 10 per cent paper and metals, and 9 per cent plastic.

Look at those figures closely, and the picture doesn’t look that dismal. Wet waste is biodegradable, as is dry waste consisting of wood and cloth. That adds up to 69 per cent, which means that two-thirds of the total waste is biodegradable. Paper and metals as well as plastic are materials which rag pickers sort out, put together and help recycle. That not only earns quite a sizeable number of people their living, but also takes care of 19 per cent of the total waste.

That tells us that though the problem is massive, it is not insurmountable. The first thing to do is to attack it at source, which means at the generators of waste, which is turn means me and you. The anonymous BMC official quoted earlier also went on to add wistfully, “If only people separated their garbage!” Forlorn hopes, wistful wishes Are these foundations of policy Instead, why can’t the BMC issue a fiat saying: “From March 1, 2016, unsegregated garbage will NOT be collected”

Until now, we hear homilies about the advantages of separating waste, but good advice has never been helpful in implementation. Only stern orders do the trick.

The next step — which is actually a step that should have been taken at least 30 years ago — is to treat the waste. In April 2015, the BMC announced plans to install small-scale waste processing plants across the city.

It sounds like a good idea to decentralise the work, except when you read that the corporation was waiting for “expressions of interest” from contractors, which probably means nothing has happened since there has been no further news about the project. Worse, the so-called “project” was to install six units processing from five to 10 mt each. Take the median and you get a total capacity of 45 mt. The daily garbage collection in the city exceeds 10,000 mt. Which world do BMC officials live in

Everyone knows that the BMC is by far the richest municipal corporation in the country, with an annual budget which exceeds that of many states. What stops it from installing large processing plants and incinerators at Deonar and Mulund It’s not a shortage of money, surely Or is waste too dirty a subject to be discussed by corporators whose study tours include the Andamans and other exotic places

The writer is a senior journalist