Garbage hills: disasters awaits

The capital of the world’s largest democracy, Delhi is facing serious issues regarding the garbage dumping. The garbage dumping creates pollution in air, waterways. There are incidence creating fire due to methane gas excision and much more.

As per the reports, Delhi is currently producing approx. of 10000 tonnes of garbage every day. With a population of around 2 crores in Delhi with the area of 1,484 km² with the limited resources and area for fulfilling the needs of such mass population, that is creating a huge risk of breakdown of the systems working in the capital due to overload use of resources.

The above picture is from the Garbage Dump at Ghazipur Landfill site in New Delhi. The residences of the area are facing great issues with the health, and hygiene degradation. The problem is not new but the issues of waste management were not raised up until 2015 when it was taken cognisance of death due to dengue of a seven-year-old boy. There are court cases in proceeding in process. In the proceeding, the bench has asked the concerned authorities to explain the process or scheme for differentiation and segregation of waste and take a note about four major kinds of waste to be managed i.e. dry, wet, hazardous and construction and building waste. For the same, the project has been started at Green Park, Defence Colony and Maharani Bagh but there are problems being faced by the agencies in the implementation procedure. So, its not just Ghazipur Garbage dumping with a high of 45 metres spread at 71 acres of land, also we have Bhalswa of about 40 meters spread across 51 acres, Okhla at 48.5 metres in 40 acres, and the newest one Narela – Bhawana Garbage dump (Delhi bypass towards Panipat) of 15-20 metres at about 100 acres of land. With this hight they are growing they have almost reached the hight of Qutub Minar of 72.5 meters, and 3 out of 4 are working beyond permissible limit of 15-20 meters. As per reports of surveys done but government agencies, the growth of these landfills is creating disasters waiting to happen, with growing respiratory disease, and contamination of river water- Yamuna, depletion of groundwater.

In conclusion to the discussion, I want to state that, with the civil bodies working for the public machinery, there is a major role of people helping in clearing of mass garbage by the means of reducing the same by not using plastic bags, reusing the products which can be used, recycling the products including paper, etc. Also with growing needs and limited resources, it’s not too late to shift to renewable resources including solar energy which is abundantly available with our geographical location.

By- PriyamKamra,
Student Reporter -INBA