Editorial

The subject stinks and is unappealing reading on a Sunday morning, but the rat-infested mountains of garbage in thickly populated Bloemendhal, Colombo North, and Meethotamulla have for many years stood as an emblem of Sri Lanka’s cavalier attitude towards waste disposal. The fetid heaps contain everything from plastics, paper and rotting food to hazardous hospital waste.

When the landfill emanates fumes, officials warn of possible combustions. Rains give rise to another set of challenges. The piles, like many others around the country, freely breed mosquitoes and rodents, making a mockery of national efforts to eradicate the diseases these vectors spread.

Garbage dumps are often tucked away in poor areas, away from middle or upper social classes. Policymakers do not see them and opinion-shapers do not venture beyond sporadic, incidental campaigns to inspire meaningful action on the alarming dilemma of waste.

Despite central and local administrations continuing to favour them, landfills such as these are an increasingly unsustainable method of waste disposal. There is high probability of groundwater contamination. As suitable sites become harder to find and volumes rise each year, authorities will struggle even harder.

Residents around some of the newer dumps are livid. Families at Meethotamulla in the Colombo suburb of Kolonnawa have protested for months against the landfill there. Nobody wants to live next to a towering mount of putrid waste. They must not be expected to. The bigger conflicts predictably occur in urban or semi-urban areas where volumes are large and space is scarce.

In households outside the direct vicinity of landfills, crisis hits home only when garbage goes uncollected. But waste does not dissipate once it leaves the doorstep. It gets deposited somewhere else in the vain hope that it will decay. This should worry us.
A cursory glance at what goes into landfills illustrates why this just does not happen. Our garbage is still an indiscriminate mix of everything that leaves homes, offices or institutions. Paper, plastic, metal, food, plants, chemicals, detergents, cloth — degradable and biodegradable — are all flung together into these piles for convenience.

This is nothing short of criminal irresponsibility. Wiser nations, aided by the private sector, are profiting from solid waste. They produce fertiliser and biofuels. They recycle paper, glass, plastics and metals. They create new packaging from old. They even make new garb from old materials and call it green clothing. The business of waste management is highly profitable and growing. Smart people are making money. The others are only making a mess.

Electronic waste poses a new challenge to Sri Lanka. While there is now more awareness about the need for specialised disposal of mobile phones, televisions, computers and other electronics, public compliance is weak and the replacement rate of new products is high. A handful of companies offer collection (and some recycling) services but not enough, when compared with the scale. In future, the country will also have to contend with nuclear waste — something it is wholly unprepared for.

A simple process of sorting, ideally at the source, would immediately cut the amount of waste that successive Sri Lankan generations are cursed with. Our ancestors knew to reduce, reuse and recycle well before that lofty slogan was crafted. Although possibilities still abound, not enough thought is given to them. Efforts to promote recycling have produced mediocre results.

Even a well-intentioned campaign encouraging shoppers to choose reusable bags over disposable ones floundered and died. But making sure the country is less polluted, less diseased, less denuded and more habitable is an obligation, not an option. Recycling must become part of a national culture, the collective psyche.

Action is needed in more areas than one. Experts at a climate change forum in Colombo this week revealed some alarming truths. In 2012, the world population was gobbling up 50 per cent more resources than the planet could afford. The poorest – like the families that live on the flanks of the Bloemendhal or Meethotamulla landfill — consume 60 times less resources than the rich. Yet, they grapple with the fallout.

Wet areas are getting wetter, dry areas drier and there ar more storms and cyclones. Temperatures in parts of neighbouring India reached record highs last month. Elsewhere on the planet, there are record floods. Sri Lankan farmers, too, complain of extreme and erratic weather patterns. Each year, crops and seedlings are destroyed by short periods of intense rain. Droughts are harsher. As the earth gets warmer, sea levels will rise.

When Sri Lanka goes to COP21 — also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference — in November, it will have some successes to boast of. For instance, around 40 per cent of our electricity still comes from hydro with the Government pledging to increase renewable energy even further. The private sector is helping to drive a “green economy” by embracing environment-friendly practices. Coast conservation is improving. There is replanting of mangroves and corals.

Power and Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka said this week that Sri Lanka would have no more coal power plants after Sampur. This is commendable. Coal is being phased out in many countries due to the high percentage of particulate matter released into the air when it is burnt. Next year, China will close down its last coal power station in Beijing due to serious concerns over air quality.

The results of a scientific study have just shown that India’s coal power plants “performed poorly on all environmental and energy parameters, getting a score of 23%”. Ironically, Sri Lanka already has one coal-based thermal power station from China and is due to get a second from India.

Statistics recorded some years ago show that Sri Lanka released a negligible amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — 0.6 tonnes per capita. This is likely to have changed with the operationalising of the Norochcholai coal power plant and an explosion in vehicle use. Deforestation (usually with political backing of provincial politicians) is causing landslides and worsening drought. Flora and fauna are losing their habitats. Humans are in open conflict with nature.

Sri Lanka must give serious thought to these issues. Governments come and Governments go, and a whole heap of verbal garbage is spoken of by the politicians, but collective ineffectiveness to solve this problem is testimony to a failed state of affairs.