There is no such thing as away. When we throw anything it must go somewhere. — Annie Leonard, proponent of sustainability.

In nature, thanks to a unique system called food chain, nothing is wasted. What is wasted for one species is food for another. So within that ecosystem virtually everything is continuously recycled. But humankind is the only species capable of generating waste. Huge amounts of waste accumulates, often toxic and harmful not just to human beings but to nature itself. It is a case of self – destruction. Why does industry continue to manufacture chlorinated plastics that generate dioxin as a by-product? Why do governments and power industries continue to generate energy by polluting environment? No one is in favour of the heavy metals in water, soil and air.

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John Ruskin in his book, Unto This Last, has aptly argued that the production of useless things, or the possession of things we cannot use, are all mere wastes, and can only be defined as ‘filth’. Indeed, till now humankind is not the homo sapiens (sapiens is a Latin word meaning wise) it has pretended to be for over 5,000 years. Humankind still remains homo non-sapiens. He could not have known the adverse impacs of his activities; otherwise, he would have manufactured and produced in a totally different manner.

We live in the age of technology that enables us to produce things in gigantic volumes, which eventually lead to the creation of an unprecedented amount of waste. Besides technological and economic development, waste generation is also inextricably linked to urbanization. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW ) continues to be a severe problem worldwide. Globally per year around 2.01 billion metric tons of MSW are produced. According to a World Bank report of September 2018, the global annual waste generation is expected to jump to 3.4 billion tons over the next 30 years. India is getting buried under mounds of garbage as the country produces some 52 million of MSW each year, or roughly 0.14 million ton per day as revealed by the Central Pollution Board Report of 2016. Approximately 90 per cent of the total amount is collected waste. Of this, only 20 per cent is processed and the remaining 80 per cent is dumped in landfill sites. At times the ‘highly polluting’ unprocessed solid waste in the dumpsites reaches 3 crore MT.

We are living in the Plastic Age. In the current millennium, plastic and human life are inseparable. In 2016, the world generated around 242 million tons of plastic waste. India produces 9.5 million of plastic waste per year. Around 12 per cent of all MSW is in the form of plastic and about 10 per cent of plastic waste ends up in the ocean according to a Greenpeace report. Once plastic wastes reach the ocean, they do not simply sink. The lightweight nature of plastic makes them float near the water surface. Consequently, sea organisms get entangled therein. Microplastic, having a size less than 5 millimeters, from plastic waste are making their way to our food chain. Plastic has now become a necessary evil. Humankind’s insatiable demand for electronic devices is creating the world’s fastest-growing E-waste stream. Some forms are growing exponentially. The UN calls it a tsumani of E-waste. If ocean plastic pollution was one of the major challenges we finally woke up to in 2018, the ebb and flow of public opinion could and should turn to E-waste in 2020. The numbers are astounding; 50 million tons of E-waste are produced each year, and if left unchecked this could be more than double to 120 million tons by 2050. The Global E-Waste Monitor, 2017 published by the United Nations University says that India generated about 2 million MT of E-waste (2016) annually and was ranked fifth in the world among the top E-waste producing countries ~ the US, China, Japan and Germany.

The developed world subsists on the very commodities that are most damaging ~ energy, chemicals, metals and papers. Automobiles, throwaway goods and packaging, high-fat-diet, and air-conditioning are all available at great environmental cost as they generate pollutants. Burning of fossil fuels releases around three-fourth of the sulphur and nitrogen oxides and other toxic pollutants. But today’s consumers hardly show any concern about the pollution, thanks to the culture of subsidies which, for example, would encourage the consumption of fossil fuels.

In the words of Jose Angel Gurria: ‘We are totally schizophrenic. We are trying to reduce emissions, and we subsidize the consumption of fossil fuels.’ Waste is the by-product of human civilization. With every new stage of civilization, our productivity has increased rapidly. At the same time, we gain a new scale in waste generation as well. For instance, in the Stone Age, there was hardly any waste. Even till a few centuries ago, waste was much less till we reached industrialization. During the Industrial Revolution (1760- 1840), production reached a new height, boosting the economy. Some economists say that one major impact of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population improved consistently for the first time in history.

There was a demand for more products, both in quantity and quality. To meet such a demand, modern technology has churned out innumerable consumer products, the raw materials for which are extracted by the most incomplete means. Since the economy was booming, we ignored the cost at which we enjoyed the benefits, which ultimately led to a major leap in waste and pollution. The economy did not grow continuously. It came crashing down in the Great Depression (1929-39 ~ a game changer. Many thinkers proposed plans to get the economy back on track. One of them was Bernard London. In his paper called, Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence, 1932, he proposed that the only solution was to ensure that the goods produced had short lifespans, which would mean that people would keep buying more goods. This would give an impetus to production and maintain economic growth.

This theory was called ‘planned obsolescence,’ which would mean that products are designed with an artificially limited life. Initially, London’s theory faced fierce opposition from different industries but gradually it was accepted and products were manufactured with a short life. Now people were purchasing more but not out of choice. This leads to the ‘speedy recovery’ of the economy as London had predicated. But because of the combined effect of over-purchasing and shorter lifespans of products, the world started generating waste like never before. Even today, we follow Technology and goods created a mountain of consumer goods, but what we did not care about was who will bear the adverse effects.

We see the mountain garbage / waste on the outskirts of our cities. Rich countries have turned poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America into their junkyards. The bulk of global Ewaste is dumped in Agbogbloshie, a neighbourhood located in the city of Accra in Ghana. It has become the world’s biggest electronic waste dumping site. We are living in two unjust worlds. Living in the affluent world we aspire to buy consumer goods and don’t care about garbage /waste. We simply dump it into the other world weaker and poorer countries. But we cannot continue to produce, consume and discard as wastefully as we do today.

What we need most is sustainable development, which has been defined as producing and consuming in such a way that we do not jeopardize the ability of future generations to satisfy their needs. However, we are a million miles away from achieving this capability. Today the conflict between the economy and ecology has become more acute. Hence, the term sustainable has come to mean what the market and not the earth can bear. Wealthier and more developed nations will not easily compromise on their growth pattern. While they praise their wealth to protect the environment, large tracks of the earth are laid to waste by their industries. The “polluter pays principle” has come to mean that the rich can afford to pollute. As Albert Einstein had remarked: ‘We shall require a new manner of thinking, if mankind is to survive.’

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)