The Resettlement Colony houses communities that were relocated here under a state resettlement program in 2000-01.įigure 3: Composite of Google Earth satellite images from 2000, 2010, 2020 for Bhalswa landfill and surrounding areas. The Bhalswa landfill in northwest Delhi towers 53 meters over the Bhalswa Resettlement Colony, Bhalswa Dairy and Shraddhanand Colony. Pungent smells, frequent fires and polluted groundwaters make these unhealthy locations and the people who live here are waste pickers and daily wage earners earning too little to ever leave these precarious shelters. These locations were once distant suburbs of cities, but today settlements crowd around these landfills. Who inhabits the foothills of these garbage mountains, living perilously close to toxic fumes and poisoned waters? How did they come to live in these harsh conditions and why do they not leave? Who lives closest to the landfills? Google Earth images (2000, 2010, 2020) show increasingly dense settlements around these six landfill sites.
Legacy dumps remain problematic as the decomposition of decades old mixed waste causes extreme water and air pollution.įigure 2: Most recent tonnage of waste dumped per day and height of garbage mounds for the 6 sites across 6 cities.
Only a few areas on large landfills have new and advanced waste management technology (like waste-to-energy, composting and refuse-derived fuel systems). Most dumpsites are two to three decades old and currently receive 2,000 (Bhalswa) to 9,000 (Deonar) metric ton of solid waste daily. Using Google Earth images, past and recent news reports, and research papers we trace changes on these sites and their corresponding settlements.įigure 1: Satellite images (2020) from Google Earth of landfill sites in 6 metropolitan cities in India showing development at 1 km and 3 km radius from the landfill. In this blog we put together a picture of the harsh environment endured by communities living in the shadow of garbage mountains in six metropolitan cities in India.
#Living earth dump fees free
The budget encourages garbage free cities but makes no specific provision to improve conditions for disadvantaged communities near landfills. Swacch Bharat Mission-Urban’s 2021-22 budget of INR 1,41,678 crore indicates India’s desire for cleaner cities. Called dump yards, landfills or garbage mountains, these toxic sites are the dark underbelly of India’s bustling, glittering cities and are home and workplace for tens of thousands of people. About 90% of the staggering 150,000 metric ton of urban solid wastes generated everyday make their way to such locations. Using that methodology, EREF estimated the national tip fee was $53.85 last year, up 3.4% from 2019.Every Indian city has at least one man-made mountain where ‘waste’ generated in our homes and businesses end up. In the 2020 report, recognizing that different states landfill drastically different amounts of waste, EREF also crunched the numbers to produce a ton-weighted average. Between 20, the fee increased by an average of 2.8% each year, according to EREF. The average fee was $68.69 in the Northeast (up 3%), $47.83 in the Mountains/Plains region (down 5.7%), $47.85 in the Midwest (down 2.1%), $46.26 in the Southeast (up 2.2%) and $39.66 in the South Central region (down 3.1%).ĭespite last year’s drop, the five-year average is still trending upward. Tip fees averaged $72.03 in the Pacific region, representing a drop of 1.4% from 2019 (the region includes the West Coast as well as Alaska and Hawaii). Price decreases weren’t uniform across the nation, however. To produce the 2020 report, EREF surveyed 439 landfills. The average landfill tip fee in 2020 was $53.72 per ton, down 3.0% from the year prior, according to a report from the Environmental Research & Education Foundation (EREF). | Janossy Gergely/ShutterstockĪverage landfill tip fees across the country dropped in 2020, although the eastern U.S. Despite last year’s drop in landfill tip fees, the five-year average is still trending upward.
0 kommentar(er)
