When community-based groups get on to waste collection and recycling, it could result in income generation and increased environmental awareness
Ranjan Solomon
Government authorities in Goa are struggling to provide and sustain adequate levels of community services, especially when it comes to waste management. Despite multiple claims on the issue, and a beeline of politicians and bureaucrats traveling to exotic destinations, purportedly to learn about advanced methods and best practices in solid waste management, the issue of a clean, garbage-free Goa has been an ineffectual exercise. On the contrary, Goa looks like a completely failed exercise in Swatch Bharat as is evidenced in the multiple garbage patches and filth strewn across various parts of the State, especially where urbanization has burgeoned.
Over the last 20 years, Sonsodo has been an eyesore waiting to be dismantled. That garbage-filled hilltop is a glaring example of government failure and wastage. The recent fire in the Sonsodo has shown how desperately vulnerable Goan waste management policy and practice is. Solid waste generation and collection capacity are a total mismatch. As a result, people are left to contend with waste disposal on their own.
The government is scrambling with poorly thought out instantaneous solutions proposed by politicians with no meaningful claim to knowledge of the subject. The question of waste management is not rocket science. If there is science in it, it is common sense and common science.
It is important that the government adopts a policy of least governance in this regard. Solutions to the issue of garbage can best get managed by community-based groups (CBGs), alongside independent environmentalists and environmentally conscious social enterprises, of which Goa has many distinguished sources. The government has a role only at the level of creating mechanisms for logistics, infrastructure, and creating budgetary provisions for the above.
When CBGs get on to community managed waste collection and recycling projects, it could result in income generation and increased environmental awareness within communities. There are examples in Goa of local communities managing waste collection services, segregation of wet waste, and recycling of plastics and tetra packs, aluminium foils, injections minus syringes, water bottles, and the like.
Three simple steps are possible ways forward:
Government should incentivise community based-neighbourhood groups by offering capacity building in managing waste and using the byproducts for compost. This means they are provided training in basic waste management/segregation of kitchen and garden waste. By properly managing these two, citizens would gain by acquiring compost for free and their gardens will be brighter, more flowery, and attract more butterflies and birds because the flowers and fruits etc would be a magnet for them to come. Secondly, their own homes and neighbourhoods and surroundings will be better organized and get greener/and cleaner.
Government should incentivise contractors with background in environmental studies with sorting units, logistics, and infrastructure at bear minimum/nominal costs including subsidies for operations. Since these contractors are drawn from among members of civil society, they soon integrate with the community, and affiliate with it as community acquaintances and environmental associates. In this way, jobs are generated among local people, and the gains of waste management begin to accrue to the Goan populace. These contractors must also be offered beneficial contracts with industrial waste and other sources.
Government should create a collective of environmental contractors who will run the big centres for managing wasted and recycling. Their expertise will more-than-suffice for the operation and will cost the exchequer far less than it did when so-called profit-making corporates who lacked ground-level expertise and people-centric commitment ran them. Municipals Council should be made accountable and responsible with frequent-enough Peoples audits and reports. After all, this is the body closest to the action as possible and is easier to probe and hold liable and answerable for failure of the link between people, contractors, and the Municipality. The State government must keep discreet distance stepping in only with resources and with some reference base with the Municipality.
Government should commission community-based environmental entrepreneurs in waste management to carry forward initiatives on a large scale to convert waster into energy. This is a process completely outside the purview of government waste management authorities. Nor must it be trusted in their hands.
Those who argue that Goa requires more garbage dumps are ignoring a basic principle. The government is missing common sense ideas and ignoring a dedicated band of waste management contractors and local environmentalists who can apply simple and comprehensive solutions provided only that that the government stays a safe distance from people-based, ecologically-oriented solutions. The bottom line is less government, more people inputs for a garbage free Goa.
