E-Paper
Greenpiece: Climate Crisis mitigation must be reflected at municipal level
Take the case of the waste-to-energy (WTE) plant in Gurugram’s Bhandwadi, in the ancient Aravalli forest... It is expected to handle waste from Gurugram and Faridabad.
Why isn’t the climate emergency reflected in local governance?
Take the case of the waste-to-energy (WTE) plant in Gurugram’s Bhandwadi, in the ancient Aravalli forest... It is expected to handle waste from Gurugram and Faridabad.
But the basics are ignored. The Solid Waste Management Rules require segregation, composting and recycling. Neither Faridabad nor Gurugram follows this.
If done in a decentralized way, only about 20% of the waste would leave the wards. Of this, dust and similar components comprise 15%, unsuitable for burning.
Should the rest 10%, including multi-layer packaging, not be either recycled via investments in new technologies or landfilled till they are substituted?
We know from the Capital’s experience at the Okhla WTE plant, that it’s very hard to monitor pollution.
Pollutants, including the deadly Dioxin, are tested once in four months. The results arrive several weeks later. In the interim, it’s business as usual. Nothing changes if it is fined.
This and the proposed Gurugram plant can harm us all, even if we live elsewhere: pollution travels. India is hit by dust from the Middle East, and crop burning in Punjab impacts Delhi.
The University of Chicago’s EPIC Centre has declared 480 million Indians breathe air 10 times worse than WHO standards.
In Haryana, it says, people would live 8.4 years longer if the air met the standards.
Air pollution is part of the climate change pantheon. The central government is leading the global Solar charge and leading climate change discourse. Why undo the vision at the municipal level?
(The author is founder and director, Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group)
