With over eight million inhabitants, Chennai city, capital of Tamil Nadu State, is the fifth most populous in India. That statistic translates into a lot of things, but the most pungent implication is the four thousand metric tons of solid waste generated each day.

By Vikram Venkateswaran

The amount of garbage generated is not unusual. But the lack of any comprehensive waste management system in a bustling metropolis like Chennai is a serious hazard.

UNICEF puts it in a nutshell – “The government looks at waste management as an engineering problem, in terms of number of vehicles to transport the waste, the size of the machines to dump them in the landfills…and not as a social issue.”

Indeed. This is why a fleet of 672 vehicles of the Chennai Municipal Corporation collects and transports 3,200 tonnes of waste to the official land fills at Kodungayur, located in the north end of the city, and Perungudi, in the south. It might seem logical to use the two ends of the city as land fills.  And it was, years ago.

Today, both Perungudi and Kodungayur are densely-populated residential areas, considered prime real estate, owing to their relatively calm surroundings and accessibility to the city’s business hub. And the dumping grounds themselves 350 acres in the north and 200 acres in the south, are very quickly reaching saturation, piled with non-segregated waste.

Untreated garbage
The final step in waste management is to burn it in heaps, with negligible attention to recycling or segregation. The result – the air choked by smog from burning garbage, soil irreversibly affected by leachates (concentrated poisons from the untreated garbage), ground water contaminated far into the city and branching further. The damage is obvious to both residents and visitors to these areas.

Radhika, a resident of Perungudi says, “The dumping yard is almost two kilometres away from my home, but every time there is a slight drizzle or a change in the wind, there is the stench and soot. I am afraid for the health of my grandchild”, she adds, “but I cannot move from here. I built this house with all my savings.”

“Every time I drive through that place, I have to cover my nose with a kerchief. The stench is unbearable. My car is covered in black soot,” says Senthil, a cab driver who frequents Kodungayur.

“Even few years ago, bore-well water used to be as good as corporation water, but nowadays we cannot use it for drinking, only for washing,” says K. Ramarajan, resident of Pallikaranai, an area near Perungudi.

But it’s not a public health issue alone. Perungudi has been home to over 26 species of migratory birds, but the numbers of stilts, teal and pelicans has begun to shrink every year.

It is impossible to remain apathetic to polluted ground water and acrid smoke, and the Chennaiites did initiate some really effective counter-measures. Many communities began segregating waste at source and vermi-composting.

Zero waste pockets
Some NGOs even set up zero waste pockets in the city; colonies or apartment complexes renewed, reused and recycled all waste.

But the ideas never really took off. Both community initiatives and private enterprises were beaten back by red tape. Permissions were revoked, the municipality workers’ union rebelled against any change in the system.

Srinivasan, founder of Indian Green Service, says, “The municipality workforce consists only of waste-gatherers, who work for less than three hours a day. They now refuse to adopt better practices, even if monetary incentives are given.”

But there is one force yet that might tip the scales towards efficient waste management – perception. Policy makers have begun to realise that heaps of untreated waste are in no way helpful to Chennai’s image as a progressive, environment-friendly city. And plans of expanding city limits in the pipeline, there’s very little time for Chennai to clean up its act.

For the average resident of Chennai, who was raised on tales of an uncluttered, cleaner and greener Chennai, the sight of garbage everywhere is heart-breaking. If the authorities would lend him a hand, he will do his bit.