Shipping the rubbish

The dark dumping spaces in India are expanding at a far
greater pace than the hole in the Ozone, and their negative repercussions are
more immediate as compared to the latter. The problem is large and the issue
intense. The country’s image, presented wrongly or otherwise, of ‘just pee or
dump anywhere’ is being exploited by nations that believe in cleaning their own
home by dumping their waste somewhere else more accommodating.

The substantiating fact comes from an article in The Times of
India: ‘At the start of the millennium, the picturesque Spanish city of
Barcelona decided to ‘go green’ and free its historic land of waste. And so,
103.7 metric tonnes of Barcelona’s garbage — from shredded plastic carry bags
to used diapers and napkins — arrived last August at the nondescript port of
Tuticorin in southern India.

The three stinking containers were promptly sent back to Barcelona by alert
Customs officials. However, for the last eight months, 72.59 metric tonnes of
trash ranging from optical fibre waste to used oil cans and rubber hoses from
Jeddah in Saudi Arabia have been lying at the Tuticorin dock, reeking.

Last year alone, nine containers of hazardous waste imported from Malaysia,
Saudi Arabia and Barcelona by three different companies in Tamil Nadu were
caught at the port in a clear pointer to rural India becoming a waste bin for
the developed world.

This year, too, 20 containers of hazardous waste from Greece and Reunion, a
French colony, imported by a paper factory in southern Tamil Nadu, were
resent from the Tuticorin port. Used syringes, juice cartons and
blood-stained napkins collected by the municipal councils in suburban London
were found in a pile of rubbish dumped in a well in a farm at Kemmarampalayam
in Coimbatore in August 2008.

But why are the developed nations dumping their garbage on Indian soil? Simply
because shipping municipal waste to India is about four times cheaper than
recycling it in their own land. While it costs Rs 12,000 to recycle a tonne of
rubbish after segregation in Britain, shipping the rubbish to India costs just
about Rs 2,800.’

It is difficult to believe that a country that does not have enough space to
accommodate its billion-plus population is literally accommodating the waste of
other countries on its land. Of course, laws are being broken, and some
mischievous elements are responsible for all the wrongdoings. Yet, the fact
that ‘charity begins at home’ remains. It is the Indian citizen who has to shed
his accommodating and tolerating attitude. Every gutka or pan masala packet
thrown has at least one silent witness to it. And it is the silence of that
witness that gives the ‘dropper’ the unquestioned freedom of loitering.