Messy Messrs.

A testament to our care for our environs or the law.

We are neck deep in s#@t! Well nearly and we seem to be getting there fast.
Some months ago we in the city of Bangalore saw an announcement for city scale waste management, the setting up of segregation units, composting facilities, waste to energy programmes, and a deadline to segregate waste at source to all residents of this city. This deadline was preceded by some softer cajoling by the city's municipal body.

One might think of this as an enlightened move, but the truth was far more grotesque. The city has been struggling with its burgeoning waste problem and has been resorting to some haphazard dumping of the city's garbage in a few locations around the city. No, no scientifically constructed landfill. Just great piles of insensitively piled garbage. In a relatively short period this has caused immense health problems to the residents of villages around these dumping sites. The rest as they say is history- the villagers protested, garbage piled up around the city, the municipality resorted to some strong arm tactics (yes, police support to dump garbage!!), the villagers remained firm in their agitation against the dumping. The situation remains unresolved.
Enough and more has been written about this, but I do remember one instance about 8 years ago, in the October of 2005. Back then this city had no denoted landfill site. The municipality, through its garbage contractors, used to lease land out from farmers and dump our waste on these lands. Bangalore had seen some record and incessant rains that year, and sure enough much of this garbage started rotting and created quite a stink. Many people wouldn't remember this, but the farmers had protested then too. All of the municipality's garbage truck fleet, some 400 of them, had nowhere to go and were parked in various parts of the city. This incident was one of the reasons that we even have landfills today.

Missing Aim, or, Aimless Mess?

As it stands the population of some 8.4 plus million dish out something to the tune of 250 to 500 gms of domestic waste per person per day (not counting for the large waste generation on account of commercial establishments and industry). A large amount of waste can also be attributed to individuals outside their homes.... at work, on the way to somewhere, on a day (or night out) with family and/or friends. The domestic waste alone amounts to some 840,000 kilos, or, 840 tonnes of waste per day..... if we consider a low number of 100 gms of domestic waste per capita. The actual figure is more likely twice that (we don't have monitored figures to corroborate this at any level)! The figure is much higher when you add that generated beyond our homes. A figure doing the rounds puts this between 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes!!

One can imagine what a nightmare it would be to collect this mammoth volume of waste on a daily basis to ensure that the city remains clean and disease free. At about 6 cubic metres of waste collected per garbage truck, that would work out to some 500 trucks on our roads. The waste would have to be collected by each polluter (individual, family, or, establishment) and the trucks would have to work like clockwork to manage this efficiently. Sadly, that is not the case.

At an elementary level WE are responsible for the failure of this system. We litter like we care a hoot! Even when we dispose off the waste from our homes, we aim for the community bin, instead of ensuring that it is placed responsibly for the collection agencies to handle it from that point on. Our roads, drains, footpaths, open grounds, and empty sites therefore face the brunt of our apathy.

The fact is that it is really easy to do our bit to reduce this burden on our municipality. The majority of our waste we dump at homes, is kitchen waste, mostly uncooked! This constitutes over 80% of the weight of all our waste we produce at home. The remaining is mainly paper, plastics, aluminium foils, and tetra-paks. There are the occasional batteries, sanitary napkins, etc.that form the more difficult waste products to handle.

A 3-tiered home composter (Khamba) by the 'Daily Dump'

The kitchen waste is the easiest to tackle, and there are simple solutions available now from
organisations like 'Daily Dump', both for the independent home and multi-dwelling communities. By adopting one of these systems, we immediately reduce the
burden of our municipalities greatly. They would not have to handle waste that is rotting, smelly and attracts pests. What's more all this organic waste produces harmful (and inflammable) gases like methane as they decompose in the landfills, apart from contributing to the acidic leachates that seep into the sub-soil. When waste remains unsegregated as it leaves our homes, it makes the lives of the safai karamcharis (or cleaning staff) far more difficult. A whole lot of this waste is recyclable, re-usable and easy to break down, and segregation at the point of waste generation helps this immensely.

There is a positive side to this. Several initiatives have been undertaken across the country, and specifically in Bangalore. Individual apartment complexes have started following the municipal guidelines for waste segregation and yet others have also tied up with recyclers to take away their paper and plastic waste. It makes sense to do this as a group as volume trade is important for recyclers. Vermi-composting initiatives, for those with space, are being given a hard look and followed successfully. 
What can help a lot is being conscious of what and how you make your purchases. This involves ensuring that you carry shopping bags with you to ensure that shop keepers and super markets don't dish out plastic bags to you. It involves making responsible choices when it comes to buying goods that are packed in layers of aluminium and plastic wrapping. It involves adopting alternatives to packaged products itself.... opting for fresh juices as against tetra-pak containers; finding decent bakeries to source fresh baked products that aren't sealed in waste generating packaging; encouraging your home delivery agencies to take back their containers and carry bags, the possibilities are endless. Remember, our decisions can ensure that we curb the waste generated right at source.

When we embark to clean up this mess and our respective acts, we ought to keep in mind the adage- what goes around, comes around.  You wouldn't want to leave behind a big stinking mess as your greatest legacy!

Toilet Talk

Fill it, flush it, forget it. How the lowly toilet has become a serious
issue to address.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been working on an initiative to reinvent to the western toilet as we know it, and bring forth innovative toilet systems that will address sanitation issues in many developing economies around the world. This is a truly laudable quest since more than 2.6 billion people worldwide are said to be using unsafe toilets, or are simply, defecating in the open. Poor sanitation is the root cause for many diseases, including diarrhoea, which kills about 1.5 million children a year. Contamination of groundwater surely leads to many other diseases, including cholera, which kill even larger numbers in the developing world. They believe that “smart investments in sanitation can reduce disease, increase family incomes, keep girls in school, help preserve the environment, and enhance human dignity.”

The endeavour to come up with a toilet, or toilets, that are waterless, not connected to a sewer, hygienic, and affordable is no easy task. The Foundation has set-up a ‘challenge’ in about 22 universities worldwide and is funding programmes that are potentially promising. The goals of the programme are quite comprehensive and aim to address complex multiple issues that stand in the way of innovation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/watersanitationhygiene/Documents/wsh-reinvent-the-toilet-challenge.pdf

The history of the western toilet is quite interesting. While there are many variants and types evolved over time, the western toilet that we now use is attributed to Thomas Crapper (yes, yes, now you know) who popularized the model in the late nineteenth century. So, what are the other toilet types beside the western flush toilet and the Indian latrine, so to speak? Here are a myriad names for you to glean from: UDT (Urine Diversion), UDDT (Urine Diversion Dry), Chemical, Portable, High-Tech, Floating, Chamber-pot, Gauderobe, Squat, Urinal, and a host of others.

The problem is that the western toilets are too water intensive for third world ‘conditions’ and the handling of this sewage waste poses major challenges of contamination of ground water, space availability, odour and handling. New and more adaptable versions are required on the pronto. Over the past couple of decades we have seen the 12 litre overhead cisterns (a relic from colonial times) reduce to a slim-line 7.5 litre flushes, down to dual flush systems with a 6 litre flush for the big job and a 4 litre flush for the small job. There is also a product in the market that claims a further reduction to a 4.5 / 1.5 litre dual flush. Some serious challenges remain, for example the bowl design to efficiently flush all matter out using minimal amounts of water.

Here are some of the concepts are scientists and environmentalists are grappling with – if you have new one please write to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. While it is not possible to describe any of them in great detail in this blog, a basic one-line description of each programme itself is quite revealing, if not fascinating.

1. Professor M. Sohail of Loughborough University and his team are endeavouring to Harald Gründl of develop a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals, and clean water.
2. Professor Georgios Stefanidis and his team at Delft University of Technology, using microwave technology, are attempting to turn the toilet into an electricity generator for local use.
3. Dr. Tove Larsen of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and Dr. EOOS are attempting a functional model of a urine-diverting toilet that recovers water that is good enough for cleansing purposes.
4. Professor Christopher Buckley and his team at the University of Kwazulu-Natal are proposing to design a toilet system that mineralizes human waste and recovers clean water, nutrients, and energy from community bathroom blocks.
5. Brian Von Herzen of the Climate Foundation and Professor Reginald Mitchell of Stanford University are pursuing a community scale ‘biochar’ (biological charcoal) production plant fed by human waste.
6. Professor Yu-Ling Cheng and her team from the University of Toronto are using a system of mechanical dehydration and smouldering of faeces to recover resources and energy. They are also trying to sanitize urine through membrane filtration and ultra-violet disinfection.
7. Professor Michael Hoffman of the California Institute of Technology has envisioned a solar-powered toilet that generates hydrogen (gas stored in hydrogen fuel cells) and electricity for local use. 
8. Professor How Yong Ng and his team at the National University of Singapore are experimenting with a decentralized modified pneumatic flushing urine-diversion dehydration community toilet block for five to six households at a time.

There have been several examples of toilet reinventions or adaptations in the Indian context. While some have addressed the design of the toilet itself, there have been those who have focused on the waste handling end of it. Sulabh, DEWATS, the segregated defecation system (where you have a separated bowls/exits for faecal matter and urine) are some of the examples. 

We encourage one and all to put on thinking caps and redefine the 'crapper'.