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How
Wasteful can be Wealth?
Pammal is a lower middle class suburb, well outside Chennai's city
corporation limits. Governed by a Panchayat (local village
body) controlled by hooligans, its disenchanted citizens are all
but forgotten by the official machinery. One of its
residential layouts, however, is a case study for exemplary
administration. Spearheaded by the local women's association, the
streets are clean even though the garbage collection truck comes
by only once a month. This is because every morning, 450 homes
have their segregated household waste picked up and taken to a
common compost yard. Here, systematically spread over a dozen
bins, rubbish is gradually converted into high-quality organic
manure - a tonne every month which is sold with no back stocks.
Besides keeping their surroundings clean and hygienic, the
residents of Sankara Nagar are also proving what every city
planner in the world knows - that waste has to be managed, not
disposed. An acronym for Ex-cellent, No-vel and Ra-dical, the
Exnora Movement which began in Chennai in 1989 is the brainchild
of M B Nirmal, a former bank executive who has turned citizens'
civic initiatives into a widespread network of 900 to 950
self-help groups of about 75 families each. Together they collect
approximately 18 per cent of the city's garbage and provide
employment to 1,500 people.
The Exnora Movement started as a clean-the-streets campaign. For a
nominal sum of Rs 10 (1US$=Rs 49) per household, common areas were
swept, the garbage collected daily and carefully deposited in the
municipal bin. The residential committees also ensured that
municipal corporation lorries cleared the waste regularly.
As with many self-help initiatives, Exnora's scope grew along with
its success. Hence, its efforts can be seen everywhere. For
instance, the Friends of the Beach Exnora has cleaned the southern
Elliots Beach of rubble. It also employs women of the nearby
kuppam (fishing commune) to keep it free of litter. Members of the
R K Nagar Civic Exnora have constructed a pay-and-use toilet for
the nearby Sivakamiammal Nagar slum. And the wage labourer youth
at the Uyaipalar Salai tenements have provided an embankment to
line the adjacent sewage canal in order to prevent it from
overflowing in the rains.
In all these efforts, the families of the workers who sustain the
efforts are cared for as the most important link in an efficient
system. They are paid decent salaries, reimbursed medical
expenses, covered for children's schooling and, sometimes, also
given uniforms and provident fund benefits.
As the Civic Exnoras - which now have the credibility of a reputed
brand name in Chennai - involve every household in a locality,
social audit and accountability is automatic.
Says Nirmal, "Garbage is a misplaced resource, an unrecognized
wealth. Going back to a self-sustaining community is possible even
in our cities, which generate the highest concentration of
garbage. Western countries have the funds to run scientifically
maintained dumping grounds with stringent rules governing them. It
is not ecologically sustainable but at least it is some sort of a
system. In our country, garbage is burned within city limits, the
smoke from which is a health hazard. Or else it is dumped in the
fast-developing outer limits, leeching into the soil and
contaminating the water supplies of upcoming residential areas.
Truth actually is, garbage is wealth, a potential source of
income. Why waste waste?"
There are three kinds of waste:
compostable (kitchen or 'wet' waste), recyclable and hazardous.
Compostable waste - which is biodegradable and includes everything
from vegetable peel to paper - forms 60 per cent of all garbage
generated. This is also the most voluminous component of civic
waste.
Moreover, slums generate only one-third the per capita quantum of
garbage - but the population density equalizes the volume to the
amount produced in the more posh localities. Explains Padma
Kalyanaraman of the Chrompet Association, "It is the better off
who use more of everything - food as well as packaged goods, which
in turn generates more waste. It is the carry bag culture
compounded by a NIMBY attitude - Not In My Backyard."
Segregation at source is the mantra of waste management.
Households are required to maintain separate colored bins for wet
and recyclable waste. A 'street beautifier' collects both
varieties every morning and takes it to a compost yard.
For a community of 500 households, a 20 by 40 square feet of land
is all that is required. Earthworms are introduced into the waste,
and over a period of 40 days the waste turns into dry organic
manure in a cyclical use of the bins. There is no foul smell - not
even flies. The manure thus produced is sold for Rs 10 per kg to a
market that seeks its suppliers of cheap, high quality fertilizer.
The general model remains the same for all the areas, though some
of the groups modify it to suit their parameters of space and
funds. For instance, at Pammal, they even raise cows - and grass
for fodder - since cow dung assists in speedier composting.
The recyclable component, which includes plastics, metals and
glass, is sold to scrap dealers by the 'street beautifier' whose
income it augments by way of a bonus.
All this, however, is not an easy task. Says Mangalam
Balasubramaniam, an activist who also heads the Sankara Nagar
Civic Exnora, "It is extremely difficult to educate every member
of the locality and I am not referring to the level of literacy.
There is also a great deal of scepticism." He adds, "I am asked
why we should be doing the government's job. Most of all, people
cannot be bothered to make the effort of source segregation. We
assure everybody that a hygienic, sustainable environment will
benefit all of us and even the worth of our real estate will go
up. Once most people are agreeable - and some never are - it is
the results which motivate further improvements."
The greatest obstacle for most groups is finding a common piece of
land that can accommodate a compost yard. Local administrative
officials keep dragging their feet over allotting public land,
even if it is otherwise abused with either encroachments or,
ironically, piles of garbage.
Once an otherwise worthless stretch is identified and sanctioned
with sustained appeals, the compost yard becomes the crux of all
activity. While activists at Exnora were busy spreading the word
by involving schools and children, the Tamil Nadu government
allotted a phenomenally lucrative collection contract for some
parts of the city to Onyx, the solid waste disposal wing of French
multinational Vivendi. Since March 2000, the company collects at
least 1,000 tonnes of garbage at a cost of Rs 6,50,000 every day.
It is presently dumped in the low-lying freshwater wetlands of
Pallikaranai, the city's critical southern aquifer.
Mired in controversy right from its inception, the company is now
facing notices from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board which
is trying to protect the marshes crucial to future ground water
supplies, a strangely paradoxical example of the administration
working at cross-purposes. Says Nirmal, "Onyx, and the Chennai
Corporation do not strive for waste management. We do not even
have lined landfills. They are just shifting the garbage and
creating an even bigger problem."
The Exnoras, on the other hand, prove why waste must not be
rubbished.
– Lalitha Sridhar
June 9, 2002
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