Today Goa’s image as a clean destination is under assault, and frankly because of our own lack of respect for our environment. Our troubles began in early 1980s when milk started becoming available in non-degradable plastic pouches, when plastic bags became a status symbol and carrying groceries back home in cloth bags was no longer cool. Urbanisation and the rise of buildings and apartment complexes robbed families of their ability to handle their garbage within the confines of their backyards. Villages in particular faced with rising demands for alternative housing, but with no means of handling household waste became victims of huge garbage mounds.
Proper planning and investments in waste treatment plants perhaps would have helped us tackle the problem head-on a long time ago, but all that successive governments did was kick the can down the road. Goa’s garbage problems are not unique. Rapid urbanization, changing life-styles and the lack of respect for the environment beyond the fences around our homes, are threatening to make India among the dirtiest places on our planet.
For long, municipalities and city corporations tasked with collecting and managing our garbage sought the easy way out. All they did each evening was set large mountains of garbage alight, polluting the air and creating even more health risk problems for its citizens. Some other towns opened their rivers, lakes and ponds to sewers and industrial waste and even solid trash
One of the boldest attempts to rid our country of its garbage problems is the appeal by Prime Minister Modi. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is the first ever national movement that appeals to the collective conscience of India to stem the degeneration and the quality of life we expect in our neighborhoods.
Goa is already benefiting from this and soon we will witness the commissioning of the first of its kind, solid waste treatment plant atop Saligao plateau. The plant relies on a combination of state-of-the-art waste-treatment technologies borrowed from different parts of the world. Once fully operational, machines rather than human hands will be used to sort and separate garbage. A mechanical press will extrude fluids from organic waste before it is processed further into compost for use with farming soil or for landscaping. Fertilizer companies will be brought on board to help market the product. Liquid extruded from the waste will be transferred into fermenting chambers for generation of energy that will be used for running the plant.
If all goes as planned, this revolutionary waste treatment plant will leave behind a minuscule residue which is expected to be land filled at the site. Two more plants are expected to be built soon and several more are expected to come online in the next few years. But like any waste treatment facilities, garbage overloads and lack of trained personnel could easily threaten the smooth operation of these new plants and furthermore, the idea of disposing residual ash in landfills around the waste treatment plants appears to be short-sighted. However much the government or the plant operators try to assure us, neighborhoods near landfills often suffer losses in terms of quality of life and property value.
Some studies have shown that birth defects increase in communities surrounding landfills as toxic compounds that become concentrated in residual ash slowly become part of the hydrological cycle. In a state like Goa which comes under the heavy influence of monsoonal rainfall, leachate from landfills, especially from those located on plateaus, have the potential to contaminate local groundwater either through direct infiltration on site, or by infiltration of leachate-laden runoff offsite. The idea of one of our Goan MLAs to transfer a garbage treatment plant from close to Dabolim Airport to Verna-Cortalim Plateau under the guise of bird hits, is completely short-sighted for this very reason. Three highly populated villages reside at the bottom of this plateau.
Addressing this perennial problem of landfills near solid waste treatment plants will require the government to think outside the box. Abandoned mines in areas with solid bedrock and far away from residential areas, when lined appropriately with low permeability material and equipped with mechanical heads for dealing with leachate are a possible way of preventing the contamination of ground water by local landfills. If the government decides to go this way, then mechanised collection points can be set up at a few locations along the river for residual ash to be barged to abandoned mines. The advantage of this water-based system is that it will minimise truck traffic, reduce air pollution as well as accidents.
Real long-lasting solutions to the garbage problem in Goa however will only come about if citizens become partners of the Government. Half of our garbage problems can be solved if waste is segregated at home like they do for instance in Japan. Every neighborhood has four different bins, for paper, glass, cans and kitchen waste, each of which are collected separately on fixed days of the week. Families and individuals will need to make every effort to reduce their dependence on material that eventually makes its way into trash cans or in dumps. Each and every one of us will need to aim for “Zero Waste”, a concept that centers around reducing needless consumption of goods, minimizing waste and maximizing recycling. Zero Waste policies incentivize citizens as well as manufacturers to reuse, repair and recycle materials like plastic bags, PET bottles, glass jars bags etc, back into the marketplace. As with many successful Zero Waste projects, the Government of Goa can do its part to make this happen by devoting resources at the different levels of governance for recycling and reuse programs, increasing recycling incentives for individuals and industries alike, ensuring that paid recycling facilities and redemption centers are widely available in every village and town, and creating a market for recycled materials or a process by which recycled goods re-enter the economy or by mandating manufacturer take-back provisions, to reuse components in new products.
Unless we stop taking our environment for granted and continue depending on our Government alone to solve our problems, we will be depriving our children and our grand-children the beautiful and pristine land that Goa once was and the land that we grew up as kids.
Joaquim Goes is a Lamont Research Professor at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
