Date:18/03/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/03/18/stories/2007031817920200.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Expert shares thoughts on waste management

"Government has to take a pro-active step by providing monetary incentives"

Prof. Ramani Narayan. — Photo: S.S. Kumar

A Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the Michigan State University in the United States, Prof. Ramani Narayan serves on the Board of Directors of ASTM International - a premier organisation setting international standards, on the Board of Directors of Northern Technologies International and is a consultant with the Harita-NTI in Chennai.

He also chairs the scientific committee of Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI), North America. Talking to Swahilya on issues global and local on his recent visit to Chennai, he summed up the global waste management practices as source segregation, composting, use of biodegradable products and the need for governments to provide monetary incentives for ecologically sustainable practices at the individual and community levels.

He stresses the need to primarily divert food wastes, instead of letting it mix in landfills.

In any country, bio-wastes constitute 60 per cent, which can be composted with paper and cardboard that constitutes 13 per cent. The rest is plastic (16 per cent), bottles and glass (seven per cent), tins and metal (four per cent) and miscellaneous (two per cent).

His argument is that the food and the carbon that is taken from the earth must be given back in some way. In the United States, several places in San Francisco and Los Angeles are practising solid waste management (SWM) by composting food and yard wastes, he says. It is also practised in most part of Europe, Korea and Japan. India, according to him, is an ideal candidate for carrying out composting.

Pointing out that the United States is not the epitome of waste management, he says in 30 States, the law requires that yard wastes will not go to the landfill or be burnt. They have to be composted. "California is much more environment-friendly," he says.

In Chennai, the system of segregation and composting should work better as there are still several independent houses and apartments. In Canada, the municipality provides the compost bin for a charge. The other big State in conservation is Massachusetts.

He says that bio-degradability, in conjunction with disposal infrastructure such as composting, is an elegant way to not only manage waste, but also provide for good soil amendment and re-enrich the soil with carbon. "That's our way of putting something back as otherwise we are only taking from the earth," he says.

The genuine interest of people to segregate is not enough, he says, pointing out that the government has to take a pro-active step by providing monetary incentives. Individual institutions, hospitals, hotels, universities, colleges and schools can take up composting in a big way.

Though the concept of composting originated in India, its value and the respect for land got lost. The micron concept hyped in India is wrong.

While the worry is that plastic, if thin, will clog the drains, increasing the thickness of the bag is just a bandage solution. It is ideal to use biodegradable products in conjunction with disposable infrastructure.