FIND A PLACE FOR YOUR STUFF

[vsncas]

If there is one thing that is symptomatic of the modern human condition, but hardly recognised as such, it is garbage. Garbage is capitalism's dark underbelly, its pathological alter ego. That is why we keep disavowing it, refusing to believe it exists.

It is, therefore, remarkable that the current boisterous debate on foreign direct investment in multi brand retail in India has completely ignored the question of garbage. According to the report from the Institute of Local Self Reliance, Washington D.C. in the 20th year period from 1990, the same period in which Walmart grew to be a behemoth, the average number of miles that a U.S household travelled for shopping increased by around 1000. And from 2005 to 2010, despite Walmart's initiation of a reduced waste programme, it is reported greenhouse gas emissions shot up by 14%.

The garbage generated by Americans annually reportedly amounts to 220 million tonnes and 80% of U.S. goods used only once before being trashed. Nevertheless, waste is seen, in popular development discourse as a "third world" problem. And the citizens of the third world have internalised this discourse, seeing themselves as part of "dirty" developing world blissfully unaware of the cost at which a "clean" developed world is maintained.

Thus the story of the Somali pirates plundering the high seas has become a part of global lore but not that of Somalia being a cheap dumping ground for some of the most toxic garbage, including nuclear and medical waste, from Europe for the last two decades and more. As long as the street are clean in Frankfurt and Paris, does it matter that children are born in Somalia without limbs?

In the U.S., even after decades of environmental education, only around 24% of the garbage is recycled with nearly 70% of it going into landfills. But, there are rare examples like Germany, which have nearly eliminated landfills, and recycle upto 70% of the waste. But the fact that the Crobern Central Waste Treatment Plant in Germany, one of the most sophisticated plants in the world (built at a cost of $ 135 million), has been allegedly involved in criminal garbage profiteering by illegally securing solid waste from Italy ( to sustain the operations of the plant) shows how tenuous and fragile the economy of "zero waste" is.

Developing countries like India, with almost non existent waste disposal systems, catastrophically seek to move to the next (superfluous) stage of consumption by imbibing the culture of Walmart. In this scenario, if justice for both human beings and nature has to be ensured, the alter ego of garbage can no longer be hidden under the carpet. It has to be confronted head on.

Source: An article by Mr. Nissim Mannathukkaren in The Hindu dt 03.11.2012

V.Senthilnathan