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!

What sets us apart? Clues to what makes communities sustainable- Spaces

This post marks the second of a series with one common theme..... highlighting the areas of living that set us apart from the way/s we lived in the past (and in some traditional/rural settlements that still persist), and which also mark us as unsustainable communities.Here is the second.

Spaces and communities

Who doesn't like, appreciate or even want a palatial bungalow? What is there not to like.... unless you are thinking of the maintenance costs and other costs of residing in a place like this. Space by itself has become a statement of class. Take a look around... the various peddlers of real estate scream out at you dishing out the larger living rooms, the larger bedrooms, and even larger dining tables.... all for a similar sized family unit. Even the specifications are near similar... the difference however, is the price. Nowadays, there seem to no bounds to what one 'wants' as space, expect perhaps the depth of our pockets.
There are some odd outcomes though..... if one buys into a builder development, then the volumes seem to have shrunk. Wonder why? Floor-to-Ceiling heights now hover at a near universal range, between 9.5 feet to 10 feet. What is ironical, is that this remains nearly the same no matter which city, or, geography we live in. This reduction in space (also reflected in the thinness of walls, is due to the builder maximising on achievable floor area. Most individuals building their own homes would do the same mainly because of costs.... be it due to the direct costs of extra material or due to the paucity of space.
How does space matter? A larger volume would mean more air to warm or cool. Too much or too little space could mean 'thermal discomfort'. Ever wondered why volumes of human habitation shrunk in extremely cold regions.... a lower volume meant lesser air to heat up, and lesser surface area exposed to the outside. More significantly, the heights of these spaces were always kept low.... to prevent any heated air to rise above. In humid regions, the spaces would not be bound, and would allow the free movement of air bringing comfort to the inhabitants. Along the same lines, higher ceilings were common in hot-dry conditions. To further aid this, courtyards were integrated to create a kind of thermo-siphon, venting out the stale hot air from the adjoining spaces, which in turn drew in fresh cooler air from the outer faces. In some cases, Jaalis (delicate stone carved screens) were provided on these outer surfaces, which absorbed the heat from the incoming air. Semi-covered and open spaces played as important a role as covered rooms. Verandahs provided shade in hot regions, and performed open to the breeze spaces in humid regions. Open terraces were rest areas in the hot nights of the northern plains.

Through history, the larger consumers were always the wealthy and ruling classes, and the masses lived in far humbler accommodations shaped by what their need and the hand-me-down knowledge systems. Uncannily, the building forms and methods were also sensible architectural outcomes for each specific geography.
Forget palaces, forts, tombs and temples for a bit, but when one thinks of traditional settlements space and form seem to vary from one region to another. What is starkly different when one compares much of these vernacular forms to present day times is how things were never over-sized. Perhaps the reason is obvious. More space meant more material to provide for an envelope, to provide for finishes and for other aspects of insulation, etc.It also made sense that there was a lot of manual labour involved in the movement of material, and therefore restricting the quantities needed made sense. I am guessing that was one of the prime reasons why material was not moved from very far (surely energy of travel did not figure beyond a monetary sense). Nonetheless, there are lessons here for the these times. In some ways, it is still evident today, in areas which are poorly connected by roads.... a boon if you ask me.
Space also has a clear impact in terms of Aural quality, light quality,and even affect our psychology (I am not referring to any Vaastu/Feng Shui psycho babble)... Many of us know the feeling of claustrophobia in small tight spaces. However, each of these have to be seen in conjunction with other aspects of other finishes. For example, the density, geometry and smoothness quality of the surfaces have an impact on the reflective quality of a space; the size, direction and nature of opening has an impact on light and air movement.... and therefore inside temperature. Shapes of any enclosure may also mean an interesting impact on you both financially and psychology. We already know that more surface area, the higher exposure to the environment... therefore more heat gain or loss, and more surface exposed to rain. The larger the space, the heavier the structure..... therefore greater the anchorage or sizing of foundation.

I did an interesting exercise once (thanks to a great teacher I had the opportunity to work with); I compared two spaces with the same area, one a square and the other a rectangle.... I found that the square space would less to build than the rectangular space, assuming they were built using the same methods and systems. Why? The answer is pretty simple really (once again, not some un-understandable explanation of energy lines and directions, which once cant get). The square has a smaller perimeter than the rectangle... and therefore the total wall area (keeping the height the same) would also amount to less. Extend this to less openings required, etc. Less materials per square foot, and so lower costs. This also meant that the square space was less exposed to the elements, and therefore gained and lost much less heat (if oriented similarly), meaning lesser internal temperature changes, providing for a more comfortable internal environment. You can see how space could also affect health.
I am not advocating a standard usage of square shapes as a result, but only emphasising the need to understand the impacts a space could have on us. From a sustainability point of view, traditional buildings had the advantage of having evolved an architecture with region specific forms and hence a more appropriate building vocabulary. Isn't it time we reconnected once again?

What sets us apart? Clues to what makes communities sustainable- Water

This post marks the beginning of a series with one common theme..... highlighting the areas of living that set us apart from the way/s we lived in the past (and in some traditional/rural settlements that still persist), and which also mark us as unsustainable communities.
It is quite remarkable that factors that brand us as unsustainable, are perhaps more due to circumstances, living in these times, rather than one of a dearth of choices that can keep us from self destructing. I hope to cover, with some help from others here at IGH, a few cross sections to illustrate what sets us apart, and perhaps throw up some answers in the process. What makes us so dependent on those many supply chains of water, energy, food, etc that any sudden break in any of these result in a literal collapse of our world?.
This series shall cover some of these aspects/themes by looking at them through specific topics.Here is the first.
Water and communities

A kund in Himachal Pradesh

A quick glance at water in today's context. Let us start by looking at the water infrastructure- piped water to our homes from neighbourhood level water utilities, which are supplied by central treatment facilities, which in turn are fed by riverine systems. Cut to the past, say over a 100 odd years, and we find that none of this applied, to the extent that we did not even draw our water directly from rivers (or lakes for that matter). Even in the most dense of cities, Old Delhi, Old Ahmedabad, Old Bangalore, Old Benaras, historical towns of Tamil Nadu, hill towns and villages across the country, coastal settlements... all drew their water from the ground. What's even more interesting, is that this held true even if they were right next to a river or stream!! The forms may have varied, but the common fact that all these instances had local solutions.
Let us move on the next level of differences, how we deal with water conduits and bodies- concreted and tarred surfaces, concrete lined drains, reclamation of low-lying areas and ponds, and a plethora of other measures to drain out any rainwater to prevent 'flooding' and reduce diseases like 'malaria'. Cut to the past, and we have earthen and other permeable pathways, ponds to hold water, percolating swales and enough bio-matter that would help retain surface moisture and also helped prevent erosion.
Take a look at our current lifestyles- everyone has access to water indulgent luxuries from bathtubs to rain showers.... we even bathe our modes of transportation. Such a luxury simply did not (or, could not) exist. We are transfixed on the appearance of water in our bathrooms, lobbies and garden landscapes, instead of considering efficient usage. Consumption today, needs some serious introspection. We have moved on from consuming what we need to thoughtlessly catering to our whims. We can start by monitoring, and progress quickly to an equilibrium stage between what we sow and what we reap (so to speak).
Then are the hidden water aspects. Also known as virtual water, this is understood best as the total water that goes into anything, be it a product, a crop, an activity. For example, a cup of coffee is said to take about 40 litres of water to make!! Similarly, cereal, processed goods, clothes, the construction of buildings, roads, etc. all consume a significant amount of water. You could find tonnes about this on the net.... just try and make an estimate of your water footprint, and you will be astonished!! In the past, keeping the circles of dependency small, and the substitution of high energy industry with craft and some rather ingenious zero energy technologies, meant that their water footprint was much smaller. Surely, there are some lessons here.
The benefits of the earlier water equation are compelling. For starters, it was significantly lower in in energy consumption, both in building this water infrastructure and its operation. Traditional and historic water systems did not mean the release of Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or, toxins into the ground.... today it does. In those traditional/historic instances, all controls were with the community and users. At the least that meant that one knew why we did not have water on a particular day, and one could prepare for that. Today, to simply inform the masses of issues related to water supply is a challenge, one which is also phenomenally resource consuming..

A Reverse Osmosis water treatment plant

The decentralised set-up also meant that growth of populations did not mean adding stress to, and therefore, an upgrade of the water infrastructure. Importantly, the past system meant constant recharge, and lower consumption, assuring more water for all. Currently, each of our 50 plus 1 million population cities, rely on individual sources of water!! Imagine the burden on those systems. What is our strategy to replenish those sources??? None exists. In these traditional alternatives the costs were significantly lower, and there was no need for extensive treatment at both the distribution and consumption ends. Today, we dump tonnes of chemicals (chlorine) to control germs, to curb suspended particles, and even to control odour. What's more, every home either has or is eyeing an RO like filtration system... one which spews out a minimum of 2 litres of extremely turbid water to give you 1 litre of filtered water.Where do you think this RO reject is heading? Down your drains into our ground water aquifers, or, dumped into the riverine systems from where we source our water in the first place!!

In the world of today, we have ignored our connect with the sources of water. Rivers are too distant to comprehend, so what do know about what it takes to source this water... laying the infrastructure, pumping costs, treatment, etc. We have ignored the health ground water table, considering what we can get from this unseen 'golden goose' (figuratively speaking) as spoils of existence. It is only now that we have begun to rediscover rainwater harvesting and recharge, something which happened by default in the past, and something that many of us are adopting only to comply to government law. But to be truly sustainable, we have to break these bondages of dependency on external inputs for water. It is also a fact that we are born into these times, and therefore find it difficult to understand such a (lesser known) past. That is the extent of our dependency and modern day conditioning. About time we break those shackles and take control!

All it took was the will to do something....

Here is something to exemplify our mindsets towards easily addressable, everyday issues. The community that I recently shifted into (Aug 2009) was where most of the residents knew each other for over 15 years.

The night I moved in I discovered (to my sheer horror) that if it rained even the least bit the entire area in front of my house gets flooded. I spent the next few days engaging with my landlord, my neighbours and the 'residents association' determining the magnitude of the problem and what their plans were to solve this. Beyond the usual discoveries of a bad layout plan, encroachment on land and blocking off of natural drainage, I also found out that the six families (of the 82 that formed the enclave) that stayed around me had tried in vain to address this but their cries for help fell on deaf ears. Replies ranged from, ".... we have forwarded the complaint to the BBMP", to, ".... how is it my problem?" and "...nobody will pay so much when it does not affect them".

The situation had reached such a stage that my neighbours had started modifying their lifestyles to 'live' with a flooded situation for a few months in the year. While some waded through the water to cross over to dry land, the more inventive ones had placed stepping stones to hop across their watery frontyards. My landlord had even been ill-advised to put up a metal mini gate to hold back the water... a kind of check dam!! My neighbour had increased the height of her sump cover to ensure that water did not enter. The more desperate amongst them (tenants like me) had simply shifted out. This situation had now lasted for over 4.5 years.

I gave my landlord and myself about a month to try the 'reaching out' one final time. When a month and a half passed I called my landlord and requested him to organise a meeting of other landlords and tenants to discuss possible solutions. No one was interested. Some had given up. There was an underlying fear that any solution would cost a lot. This was further influenced by their conviction that resolving such things was the problem of the authorities that be.

So I went ahead with finding a solution myself. I had been taking pictures of the flooding over the month or so that I had been here. I determined the local drainage and slopes, the volume of water that collected on different days and scoped out areas where I could divert the water. I had two choices- one, to drain out the water away from this low-lying portion of the enclave, or, two, to percolate the water into the ground. The latter seemed the more attractive and easier choice (sort of).
The volume of water to be tackled (about a 40,000 litres of water in a moderate shower of rain), the area required and the percolation properties of the soil there were my variables. I found that the land sloped across the road to a common, neglected strip of land (about 3 metres across and about a 100 metres long), and I found through a simple infiltration test which showed me that I could percolate about 3,000-4000 litres of water an hour.
I employed a team of 4 labourers, cleared the common land across the road. This had become a dumping ground for all kinds of muck from the very same homes. It took us 5 days to dig a trench about 1.5 metres in average width, about 0.6 metres in depth and about 15 metres long, another day to make a detail (using some waste drain pipes) to divert the water into the trench, yet another day to line the trench with gunny sacs (reject from a local departmental store), and a final day to clear the road and surrounding area from slush generating silt/earth and fill the potholes with 10 mm stone jelly. In all it took 8 days.
To increase the percolation, two concrete rings (3 feet in diameter) were inserted in the wider section of the trench. A layer of stone jelly was filled around the concrete rings adding a filtering medium of about 10 cm. Care was taken to provide a block at the holes on the ring to keep the jelly from pouring in.Now I intend planting around the entire trench, providing a couple of benches made from waste stone and construction debris (from a house being built nearby).... creating a positive space for the community.
Does it work?? Well, it handles a normal rain of up to 8 mm in a couple of hours with ease. Heavy rain showers do create the ponding effect, but it all this water percolates over the next few hours (I have added the picture in another post). The system has been tested by many days of rain, and the nearly an entire rain cycle in the year.... We dont have the nightmares of water standing around for days (yes, we do have to live with that for a few hours)... and the community now recharges about 40,000 litres of rainwater in a normal rain shower.
What else can we do to better this system? To solve the issue of any ponding (once and for all), we would need to increase the capacity of the initial holding system. Which would mean percolation pits, tanks, wells that would hold a volume of about 40,000 litres of water. I have plan to start on that soon.

All it cost me was Rs 5,600/-... the irony was that this was less than what it cost my landlord with his mini check dam and my neighbour's sump cover remodelling.
A return to normalcy, a reduced mosquito menace.... an end to about 5 years of woes.