HOLE(Y) Bin series (Part 1)
Closer to the Natural World
Change is inevitable! We all know that environment is dynamic, and it will change. However, like a tortoise, it should go slow and steady, so living organisms can get adequate time to smoothly adapt and gradually evolve, to survive. However, if this natural dynamic process gets accelerated & aggravated, to an extent that keeping pace with the change becomes difficult, and then the results become catastrophic.
The environmental impacts of Homo sapiens’ activities, who emerged 200,000 years ago, compared to this short period (of post industrialization), is alarmingly significant.
Systematically, we have suppressed and swallowed the need to preserve the environment, only to meet our own selfish needs. In the name of modernization and development, we have definitely evolved exponentially, but at the same time, we have moved further and further away from the Laws that govern the Natural World!
In the Natural World, waste for one, becomes food for another. Poison for someone is potion for another…. In the natural world, there are no landfills! It is there only in the Human World, Our World!!!
Speaking of landfills that are steadily mushrooming around us; they not only pollute the borderless environment: soil, water, and air with its severe toxicity, but has also emerged to be a greater contributor to Green House Gases (GHG). Besides CO2, it also produces nearly equal amounts of methane, which is a flammable and potent greenhouse gas that is about 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the Earth. Nearly, 50% of the dump in the landfills are organic waste. In spite of being in the open, the organic waste is mixed and covered with a variety of non-biodegradable waste; thus, reducing the aeration around it. Due to this situation, most of the organic waste decomposes anaerobically instead of aerobically, thus adding more fuel to the already existing Global Warming challenges.
There are many simple solutions available to prevent this huge man-made problem.
We need to, mandatorily, stop the entry of biodegradable waste into the landfills at any cost. Handling, treating and recycling biodegradable waste at source is no rocket science. It can be done easily at the individual or community level. With the right cooperation, collaboration and eco-responsible behaviour is a matter of time that we can eventually turn all the stinky polluted landfills to resource-fills, thus bringing us closer to the Natural World.
Let us be that change!
By Nita Ganguly, National Coordinator — Waste Management, Climate Reality India, Educator and Author
PS: The next article in this series will be on, “Know Your Landfill!”
