Trash mountain - good or bad?

Science & Environment Science & Environment: In The News
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This is quite an astonishing news story today. If anyone needs to understand our impact on the environment and how that will ultimately destroy us if it is not controlled, look no further than this :

“It’s a slow poisoning of people living here. The poison enters their bodies through the air weakening their immunity and medicines are not as effective as they should be,” Dr Arshad Khan says.

He has been practicing for 14 years at the Mulla Colony, which is adjacent to the Ghazipur landfill.

One of the largest landfills in the country, it is also called the “garbage mountain of Delhi”.

A monstrosity, an eyesore - but more than that a source of death, decay, disease and pollution for hundreds of thousands who live and work in its shadows.

This trash mount is more than 200 feet high and covers an area of almost 70 acres - over 50 football pitches.

Standing at the top of more than 14 million metric tonnes of waste, one gets the size and scale of this man-made disaster.

Its stench is nauseating, breathing is difficult and a toxic taste engulfs the mouth and throat.

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What else can they do Annie?
Massive population there.
Surely they could burn it and produce energy, the discharge and pollution can’t be as bad as what they are suffering now.
Metal could be recycled and anything that burns could generate electricity.
It could take years to reduce that mountain while ever new stuff is still being dumped.
I’m sorry if I’ve repeated something but I didn’t have time to view the link…
Its a throw away world we are now living in.
When I was a boy we just had one galvanised dustbin to empty each week and all the burnable stuff went on the fire in the living room (they weren’t called lounge’s then, only posh people had 'lounge’s and drawing rooms and studies etc)…
Yorkshire

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The trouble burning the mountain is the toxic smoke produced. It’s a perfect visual example of what happens when you try to sweep rubbish under the carpet. It’s actually a good thing that we have this visual shocker. Might make people think about the mess we are making.

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Population of Multi Millions. Misgoverned.
Solution. Not only Plastic. ‘ALL’ Waste can be utilised.

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And. Compressed Building Blocks.
= Financial reward out of Waste.

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Good grief, are we really going to title this about portending global environmental suffering of people in first world nations without first and foremost addressing the immediate humanitarian issue that is right in front of us?

There is nothing new here on the environmental side; it’s just a matter of getting the government moving on the programs. The article ignores praising the efforts that are underway and detailing the plans already being executed and what is needed to get theses already-in-place programs moving again (prioritization, government officials directing limited funds elsewhere and raising the funding).

  1. The insidious caste system still exits, and for many desperately impoverished, the dump is a source of minuscule income. Thousands of poor who don’t want the site closed, so the first priority has to be programs to get people trained, properly housed, and supplied with the safety equipment and conditions they need to continue their efforts during the transition. Making the “least important” people in India the most important remains a deeply-seated cultural problem. The same can be said for the Zabaleen in Cairo.

  2. The second is to stop making this about us. Instead, congratulate this nation for finally having a large and still growing network of trash collection that is comparatively new. Locals need more encouragement and incentive to put their waste in dumpsters that will be regularly emptied. Telling impoverished people living on a level of basic survival to individually cut down on their waste and recycle is outrageous; do we (first world) ever have the nerve sometimes :roll_eyes:.

  3. Next, purchase the land for new sites and start building the waste sanitation technology that already exists and is used with great success around the world. Start the mitigation problems of the present dump for which the technology is already there - filtration, methane collection, bio-breakdown, etc. All solvable.

  4. Court waste technology companies - domestic or foreign - to come to India and set up shop for the mitigation with. Toss a ten-year environmental impact fee on exports.

  5. Put an end to ridiculous, wasteful, virtue-signaling, conferences, keyboard warriors, summits, news articles, and organizations that doom cast and lecture emerging and third-world countries on what do do, and instead send them workers and and $$$. So much talk, so little action - and get on with rewarding progress with even more and support in the form of waste mitigation firms on site.

200ft is not at all unusual for an urban dump, and the technology is there to resolve the methane and seepage. issue. Sure, Delhi has plans close the thing and start a new one with waste technology while mitigating the current site, but the priority is the people who are clinging to life by using that dump for resources.

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We all have a waste mountain that in our case is buried somewhere in landfill. Somehow in previous centuries people managed to live without this level of garbage production.

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The time you mention was before plastics during a time in which we chose to abuse and kill animals for transportation, labor, and fuel instead.

I really like this video: This woman is driving her fossil fuel machine to the therapist, where energy is burned to keep the room comfortable, so she can discuss personal emotional trauma caused by a garbage problem that she has only experienced in the news, her obsession of which is preferable to other “causes” because they trigger her food obsession (with complete disregard to the food insecurities of others).

“I’ve raised awareness; what more can one person do!”

First-world problems.

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The video is interesting because of the message from the therapist that she has no control of the garbage situation. That she has no power. The rest of the film turns that notion on the head.

It was quite a bit ahead of its time with this garbage scene. Shot in 1989 it was at the time on the surface a metaphor for events in her life, but you have to wonder whether Soderbergh was also trying to make us think ahead (because he had). He did later direct Erin Brockovich and Contagion.

It’s a journey humanity needs to make to realise that we too have the power to change the attitude we have to our throwaway culture and to be accountable for our part in the mess.

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I suppose I am not clear by whom you mean by “we”?

What are you specifically asking for in terms of behavior and resources?

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I’m talking about a change in mindset so people question their choices and question the “rubbish in rubbish out” culture we live in. We = humanity.

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Thank goodness for the invention of the motor car otherwise every city would have a similarly sized pile of horse manure

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which makes great fertiliser for your roses.

I’m not talking about going back to horse and cart (although India still uses horses and donkeys alongside cars). But we don’t need a new car every other year.

There’s a conflict between profitability and sustainability. There’s a tremendous amount of pointless landfill rubbish being produced by factories around the world.

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I know… :115:
Lets scrap all the internal combustion engine cars replace them with new electric powered vehicles…
And then…demolish all the coal fired power stations and replace them with hundreds of thousands of wind turbines, solar panels and back them up with massive Lithium battery storage facilities that will supply a few thousand houses with power for one hour…
Or we can burn all the rubbish mankind (and womankind) produces and use it to generate electricity and figure out how to do something about the smoke…You know…Like what we can do with diesel engine exhausts.

We are due to have a Lithium battery storage facility built here to supply 340,000 houses for one day…
Quote:-
The Thorpe Marsh Green Energy battery storage project could store up to 2.9GWhrs of energy, enough to supply around 340,000 households with electricity for one day, and would be used to ensure reliable and stable electricity grid operation at times of peak demand, thus helping to improve the UK’s energy security over the long term.

In particular, it will be able to store renewable power generated during periods of oversupply of renewable electricity, and then release such power into the national electrical network when there is insufficient supply of renewable generation, such as when it is less windy or sunny.

To replace a coal burning power station that could supply most of Yorkshire for 24/7

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Hi

Finally, something on which I have a tiny bit of knowledge and feel reasonably confident on commenting on.

Firstly, not all of India is like this, It is a huge Country with very different Regional Governments.

Kerala for example is much better, very sophisticated waste collection and disposal systems, mostly run by Veolia, the same company which deals with my refuse here in the UK.

Waste is a very profitable resource, providing it is used profitably.

Centralised recycling, splitting it into reusable streams, metals, glass, some plastics etc.

Food waste can be used to produce methane, used to provide heating and electricity.

Vegetable waste can be composted to provide valuable soil fertilizers and conditioners.

Of the remainder, a lot can be burnt to provide power.

There is still a residue which is dangerous and needs to be disposed off by landfill.

Catalytic Converters for vehicles are fantastic at reducing pollution.

This is because we know what is in the fuel.

The Catalytic Converter which can deal with a hugely different and random fuel mix has yet to be invented.

We can learn a lot from others, Warsaw is a great example of combined heat and power from Waste.

It is not all about Green Energy, a lot is about producing our own power, not being reliant on World Suppliers who control what we pay.

AKA, Energy Security.

Other things, the UK is now sending back to Germany tons of Radioactive Plutonium Waste from their Nuclear Power Stations.

A very sensible decision.

Also be aware of so called ethically sourced materials.

We had Laura Ashley, a huge company dealing with ethically sourced clothes and furnishings.

They where on my patch decades ago, a big thing here in the UK, natural cotton fabrics and upholstery.

Unfortunately, to comply with our fire retardant rules on clothing and upholstery, they had to be sprayed with Thallium.

A very effective human poison.

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Yes, Swimfeeders! Much of what you said supports the points that I was trying to make. Locking up a landfill to mitigate is not as simple as it sounds, when entire communities build up around them and use them as a means of a support. The presumption that large cities and developing countries aren’t doing anything or enough about their waste is wholly unfair. Many communities and nations are already making improvements; the mere existence of these landfills are proof of that. Imploring third and developing nations about what to do with their waste has to be balanced with assisting them with more pressing needs.

It’s just seems so heartless that we are talking about our need to address the waste problem by reducing when the first video showing people digging through the worst of it as a means of survival. It’s a complex issue. I think we are a bit arrogant, @AnnieS when “We” includes those people in that video. My brother was in Shanghai in the worst of their air pollution conditions a couple of years ago, and my first reaction was, “They should have to do something about that.” Presumptive, to say the least.

The finger-pointing is tedious. Where’s the reporting about the incredible strides that have been made in the last forty years? The vast majority of the world has the cleanest water, the cleanest air, and the most sophisticated waste management technology not just in our lifetime - but since the Industrial Revolution. If you want to bring people into the fold, show them how their actions, taxes, and agreed-upon regulations work and make a difference. For example, US car owners are keeping their cars years longer than in the past, at about 12.5 years, and used car sales have likewise steadily increased. If you want people to reduce waste by keeping cars longer, don’t mandate it or harangue the public; build a better car instead of beating the drum that people are morally wrong for each time they replace theirs. Consider that the technology of waste management is big business, and it’s actively driving an incredible amount of improvement in ecology and health.

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We are all responsible because we all have a mountain of landfill we have created over the course of our lives.

My point in creating this thread was not the socio-economic problems in India. It’s what this mountain fo trash symbolises. In my opinion it symbolises human arrogance yes - but arrogance towards nature and towards our planet.

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:grinning:Fair enough!

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I have written twice to my federal member about the total lack of recycling of soft plastics in this country (they all go to landfill), he has never replied but as he is retiring at this year’s election perhaps that is not surprising.

Over the years his safe Labor seat has become less and less safe. My hope is that it will become a marginal seat and the electorate will actually get some money spent on it. Toward this aim I personally always put the sitting member last on the ballot paper, I just wish more people would do the same.

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What’s worse is that our county purchased plastic recycling bins, two recycling trucks, and built a recycling transfer center only to discover that within five years, all the recycling that was being picked up was going to the regular landfill. Why? There were no takers. It’s just not a profitable venture, and the county had no long-term means of supporting it. Our local leaders tried to cover it up, so they could continue the false narrative that we as a county were doing our part. A shame all around.