Jamwal Mahadeep Singh
Modernization and
progress has had its share of disadvantages and one of the main aspects of concern is the pollution, it is causing to the earth - be it land, air, and water. With increase in the population and the rising demand for food and other essentials, there has been a rise in the amount of waste being generated daily by each household. If the management and disposal of waste is improperly done, it can cause serious repercussions on health and problems to the surrounding environment. Waste that is not properly managed, especially excreta and other liquid and solid waste from households and the community, are a serious health hazard and lead to the spread of infectious diseases and bad odor.
This leads to unhygienic conditions and thereby to a rise in the health problems. If we want to make sure that we are getting rid of all our waste in the right way, we need to be good at waste management. Waste management has a huge impact on our daily lives and well-being.
Disposing of waste in an environmentally-friendly manner is crucial to our well living. An inevitable consequence of development and industrial progress is generation of waste. Therefore, efficient waste management is a matter of concern. In India, the National Environment Policy, 2006 while suggesting measures for controlling various forms of environmental pollution lays emphasis on the need for collection and treatment systems for recycling wastes and devising measures for environmentally safe disposal of residues.
Waste Management is the leading provider of comprehensive environmental solutions.
The waste is the pronunciation for all such material termed to be of no common use, accumulated by cleaning process of surrounding area, house hold, commercial institutions, industries, and what not, whereas waste management is an activity and action required to manage waste, from its inception to its final disposal.
It includes collection, transportation, treatment and disposal. If we track down the history on the subject, we will come across that at the early stage of life, amount of waste generated by humans, was insignificant due to low population density. The common waste produced during pre-modern times was released back into the ground locally. Some civilizations were more concerned in their waste output and there were fixed monthly rituals, in which the people of the village would gather together and burn their rubbish in large dumps. With advancement of life style and modernization, there was urban growth of large population, which contributed in buildup of large quantity of waste of divergent nature, and these all collectively caused a rapid deterioration of sanitation, health problems, water bodies and environment. The great player in the field emerged is the Industrialization. The Governments failed to cope up with the required waste management programs and the contributors of waste failed to address the issue in right perspective. Some of the types of Waste mainly are Industrial Waste, Bio-Medical Waste, E-Waste, Clinical waste, Constructional and demolition Wastes, Domestic Waste etc. The main Waste concerning the residential societies can be termed as 'Municipal Waste' the residential, institutional, commercial waste can be clubbed under this category of 'Municipal Waste' and Plastic Waste.
The Municipal waste management is intended to reduce effects of waste on health, environment or aesthetics and mostly effected is the urbanized area which involves residential waste, which further can be classified as household waste and kitchen waste, and waste of surrounding area and waste from drudgery of lanes and drains. The household waste from toiletry problem cannot be solved only with technical end-of-pipe solutions and kitchen waste management cannot be solved by dumping it in Dust-Bins. The surrounding clean waste cannot be managed by dumping it, in many dumping sites in the societal locations which are major health hazards and always targeted by the people.
Our problem of disposal of waste management accelerates as we do not pay heed to store waste at its source, domestic waste thrown on streets, trade waste on roads/streets, construction waste are left unattended. Biomedical wastes are disposed into municipal waste stream.
Industrial waste often disposed of in open areas. There are many laws and rules framed on the subject such as;1. Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling), Rules 1998. 2. The Batteries (Management and Handling), rules 2001. Replaced by E-Waste (Management and Handling), Rules), 2011. 3. The Plastic Waste (Management and Handling), rules 2011. 4. The Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Trans-Boundary Movement), rules 2008.
The methods involved in waste management can generally be categorized as;
1. Source reduction and reuse: It is a matter of thought about requirement of the daily use items, which contribute large in production of our domestic waste by sticking to the minimum requirement.
2. Animal feeding: By adhering to the principle of animal services, we can contribute in feeding to the animals by sending our food waste to cattle ponds and dairy farms.
3. Recovery process: Is a method where useful discarded items can be utilized for a specific next use, such as to process them for converting to energy, useable heat, electricity and fuel? Such waste can be sold to such unit holders and it becomes profitable in this way.
4. Composting: is a natural bio-degradation process that takes organic wastes i.e. remains of plants, garden, and kitchen waste and to turn into rich food for plants and it also reduces creation of waste material?
5. Land filling: is an old tradition of dumping waste in the open spaces and barren lands? This is now becoming obsolete owing to the reason of non availability of such lands. Existing landfills are facing problems because of encroachment. Additionally many types of garbage may be damaging to the soil, ground water and surrounding habitat.
6. Combustion: involves burning of waste at high temperature to convert it into residue which is advantageous as the waste is reduced in volume of solid waste.
7. Recycling: is the process of converting into fresh raw material, plastic and other metallic waste, for reproduction of items.
In this way the waste management is also beneficial to the individual, society and nation as a whole, as it is economically beneficial because of the reasons of less use of fresh material, social impact is that it has adverse effect on health by proper waste management method and environmental benefit is that it improves quality of air and water and this waste management has provided a source of livelihood to a number of persons also.
The introduction of "Domestic Waste Collection" has become order of the day, and some sort of 'service fee' is not going as a burden on even family of a meager source, because the health benefits which we will accrue from it will be hundred times more. Awareness is required to keep three types of 'Dust Bins' in every household for disposal of three type of waste i.e. waste for recycle, General waste and food waste. Due to lack of proper waste management and management of debris, the Waste dumped near a water source also causes contamination of the water body or the ground water source. We need to learn from Sweden, which is a zero waste country.
Concluding, the write up with the message from 'Sanskar Sanskriti Manch-Udhampur' that "our action makes a difference, let us accept and take responsibility and put it in the right direction as a campaign towards waste management. |
