Smelly solution: Trash treasure of twin cities

Twin cities generate 500,000 tons of waste each year; great potential for waste-to-energy conversion, recycling.

ISLAMABAD:

Recycling and waste-to-energy projects are two possible solutions for the gargantuan solid waste management crisis in the twin cities, according to environmentalists and experts.

Inefficient collection, transportation and disposal of the municipal trash generated in the twin cities pose ecological and health hazards for the residents.

Recycling of trash is a workable solution at least for the federal capital, said Pakistan-Environment Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) Director General Asif Shuja.

“Segregation of waste can be done at the source into categories to facilitate recycling,” Shuja said. “Residents in the capital will most likely help with this eco-friendly initiative.”

Following a recent intervention by the Supreme Court, the civic agency went on record with four remedial actions, one of which was encouraging the recycling industry.

The twin cities generate as much as 500,000 tons of waste each year, nearly one-fifth of which remains uncollected, according to official estimates.  There is already a parallel recycling market in existence in the twin cities.

According to a research of the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) more than 65 per cent of the 118 households surveyed in urban Rawalpindi sold recyclables to waste collectors.

The NRSP researchers also found that most of the 118 Rawalpindi households were not served by any municipal solid waste service. They suggested that businesses should be encouraged to develop propositions for waste collection and management but be regulated by the government.

“The solution is clear: we have to involve the private sector,” Shuja said, agreeing with the researchers. “The authorities have let go of so many opportunities in the past and failed to deliver a good solid waste management system.”

The Pak-EPA’s own efforts to introduce an alternative to hazardous plastic bags have met with limited success, even after a year since a complete ban on sale, purchase and production of plastic bags was introduced in Islamabad. Shuja, however, takes pride that some supermarkets and pharmacies have ditched plastic in favour of biodegradable bags.

The open dumping of trash leads to health risks, burning of trash releases carcinogenic fumes in the air and interaction of rain and heaps of trash can lead to contamination of underground water, according to Shuja.

A 2013 paper by Pakistani researchers indicated that open dumping in the H series has changed the soil composition at the dumping site linking it to a 27 per cent reduction in plant species around the site.

The population expansion, especially on the outskirts of the twin cities, is also contributing to littering of previously clean villages. These areas are not serviced efficiently by the existing solid waste management system. Any increase in population could be catastrophic in terms of environmental degradation, according to environmentalists.

The CDA came close to a solution in 2008, with the proposal of a landfill site in Kuri, but that project quickly became the subject of controversy. Objections including contamination and polluting the water table raised about the project are all problems that can occur at landfill sites, even though Pak-EPA officials believe modern technology could have minimised those risks. Since then, the CDA has been shifting its trash dumping sites on an ad-hoc basis.

Shuja recommended waste-to-energy as a solution being used worldwide to tackle solid waste management. “It also makes sense given our country’s power crisis,” he said.

Using solid waste to produce electricity usually involves the incineration of waste materials. The downside is that the incineration plants release harmful gases into the atmosphere and must be made to follow a strict emissions-control regime, according to environmentalists.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 3^rd, 2014.