Many residential societies in major cities are being educated about domestic waste management. There are multiple benefits of waste management and by our little effort, we can save our precious lands from turning into landfills. It is true that the modern world is turning plastic. Everything that we procure from outside comes wrapped in plastic. Not only plastic, the food waste, the e-waste that we as households generate is humongous. Imagine the number of such households in a residential society and in a city. It is no secret that landfills are fast filling up. These landfills lead to pollution, diseases, and water contamination.

On average, the city of Gurugram generates over 900 tonnes of waste daily. The Bandhwari village near Gurugram hosts all the city waste. The mound of garbage has grown to a mountain that is casting a dirty shadow on the biodiversity and village nearby. Spread across 32 acres, the Bandhwari landfill receives almost 2,000 tons of solid waste daily, from Gurugram and Faridabad. This land is housing more than 3.5 million tons of untreated waste of the cities. The groundwater around the landfill is highly contaminated, the area emanates a foul smell and is the home-ground to various diseases including cancer.

Also, read Turning to Solar for Cleaner Waste Management

Source: TOI

As responsible citizens of our country and also for the sake of our future generation and the world, it is a welcome step to segregate waste at the household level. As you can see in the flowchart above, the issue arises on the first hand as the waste is not properly segregated at homes. What we can do is separate our waste into – wet, dry, hazardous, and e-waste. All kitchen waste goes into wet waste, all paper, stationary waste comprises the dry waste, all personally used bio-waste such as diapers, sanitary pads, band-aids, go into hazardous waste and we all know about e-waste. Many societies are also building their own composting units for treating wet waste. Let’s encourage our neighbors and societies to adopt waste segregation, if not yet done so. Let’s follow the four R’s – Reduce, Reuse, Replace, and Recycle!

Read more about Waste Management here.