Waste Management.
The Situation Of India.
India is one of those developing economies who are to be termed a developed nation in the recent future. India has undertaken various developmental paths so as to attain development. But on its path of development it has damaged the environment. The environment had crucial impacts due to the developmental path followed by India. These impacts include serious issues like land degradation soil erosion etc. These has done a lot of damage to the condition of the environment. Added to these are the issues related to the waste management system in India. The amount of waste generating in a developing industrialized nation will be on the higher side. The only solution is to have an effective waste management plan and to execute it. But hat was not the case with India. The waste management plans India proved to be insufficient to absorb all the wastes generated within. It was because of many reasons like the inefficient implementation, corruption etc. These caused the wastes to get dumped into the local areas. It affected the people living nearby adversely. The smell and the filthy atmosphere the wastes created made the humans inhabitants to flee from there. These uncontrolled dumping of wastes which includes chemical wastes caused several health problems to those who lived in the areas nearby. It became real hard for people to live in such filthy and unhealthy conditions, and they could do nothing but shift from those areas to some other places. This was a major problem in most of the village areas of the country. All the wastes from the cities were dumped into these villages so as to keep the cities clean. To make the villagers agree to the plans of dumping the wastes in their villages the officials offered several interesting prizes like job opportunities to the villagers so as to make them sell their lands or agree to the officials. Those who disagreed where often threatened and where forced to agree to the wimps of those corrupt officials. In this way they obtained the lands and started dumping the wastes there. None of the villagers got any jobs or none of the offers made by those officials became real. They were fooled. But it was too late when they knew that they were being fooled and they couldn't do any thing about it.
How To deal With It As Individuals.
It is very necessary that we should make our move towards cleaning our environment. It is the need of the hour to protect and save our environment. So we should take the necessary steps to reduce the waste generation and to clean the waste filled areas. It might be thought of as a tedious task but it is not so. It can be done with three simple steps
1. Reduce: First of all we must reduce the use of non biodegradable materials which adds up to about 80% of the total wastes generated. These include the plastic bags we use for carrying things. The non biodegradable materials are those which wont get degraded biologically like any other natural material. for eg. a paper thrown into a heap of mud will eventually get degraded in the course of time, but this is not what happens with a plastic bag kept at the same spot . It wont get degraded even after hundred years. Such materials which doesn't get degraded naturally are known as non biodegradable materials. They are the main causes os the environmental problems.
2.Reuse: The second thing to do is to reuse these plastic and non biodegradable materials so as to reduce the harmful wastes generated. We can use the plastic bags once use again and again as many times as we want. Reusing this reduces the wastes from these.
3.Recycle: The third thing to do so as to reduce the amount of non biodegradable material is to recycle them after use. This reduces the waste and makes the same material available for other purposes, like if a big plastic bucket gets broken and it not good to be used, so you can recycle it and use as a plate or a container for storing things etc.
This is what we can do with the non biodegradable waste materials.But what are we to do with the other stuffs?Are we to dispose them off anywhere?
The other stuff are not be disposed off anywhere but they are to be converted. These biodegradable substances mainly food wastes can be converted into manure which can be used for the good health of the plants. They can be also used as a fuel for cooking by using bio gas plants. So by waste disposal we can not only gai by just protction of our environment but we also get many other benefits.
Conclusion.
We started our discussion from what happened in India and saw what was the main reasons for the increased wastes found in the local villages. Then we discussed about what we,as individual, can do for improving the situation.
India is just an example in this situation. Many countries are having the same issues related to waste management. But India Is now taking steps to decrease these wastes. Many governmental and non governmental programs like the Ganga Action Plan is set up. The Ganga action plan is one which is concerned with the cleaning of the divine river Ganga.
It is not merely the task of the government to clean up the environment. Many of us might think that we are not responsible for this situation so that we don't have to be involved in the cleaning duty. But it not so, we all have to join our hands if we are to make a change. We all have to do our parts for the environment, because its no ones personnel or private environment, but it belongs to all its inhabitants. So it is the duty of all of us to do something so as to reduce the wastes generated, to clean the environment ,and to make our mother earth healthy.
