No matter how much we ignore waste management and reducing carbon footprint, we cannot stop caring about something that affects our lives daily. Such was the state of the Ghazipur landfill that had become so strikingly huge that people started joking about the landfill having its marker on Google Maps. Asia’s largest litter mountain has a height of 213 feet which was taller than the Taj Mahal. Two years ago, a petition was signed to fix the problem, and the same garbage mountain is now reduced by 40 feet and continues to shrink all because the citizens raised their voices.
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The Scary Past Of The Ghazipur Landfill
The landfill, which happened to be Asia’s most enormous, posed a health hazard to the people working in the compound and living in the vicinity. It made headlines In 2017 when the “kachra pahaad” killed two people when a section of it had collapsed. Later in 2018, it was found that the landfill had reached the height of 65 metres which was eight metres less than that of Qutab Minar’s size. The landfill would also regularly caught fire every summer, shrouding the area in toxic smoke. And although attempts were made to find new dumping sites, no solution was found. Bengaluru Wins The Title Of “Best Sustainable Mega City” For It’s Waste Management Efforts.
The Petition For Change
A petition was signed where over 30,000 people supported the petition to clean up the mess. Gautam Gambhir, the then newly elected Member of Parliament in whose constituency the landfill lies responded committed to cleaning up the dump in October 2019! Did you know Navi Mumbai Is Now Among The Top 6 ‘5-Star Rated Garbage-Free Cities’ Of India?
The Plan Of Action
East Delhi Municipal Corporation claims to have reduced the height of Ghazipur landfill through regular processing of heritage waste by 40 feet in the past ten months. In July 2019, National Green Tribunal (NGT) gave directions to all the three municipal corporations to engage trommel machines as per the Indore model. The east corporation installed the device and processed 1.3 lakh metric tonne of heritage waste. Eight trommel machines were installed to process the trash at the landfill, and they were also aggressively working on biomining. The government also plans to install four more trommel machines.
Being the only landfill site of the East MCD, unprocessed waste is being kept on this site even today. However, now garbage is not put on top. Instead, its put on space on the side and the waste it’s reduced by trampling. Indore Bags Cleanest City In India Title For 4th Time; Patna Dirtiest City
Today, the garbage mountain has finally made news headlines for shrinking, and we hope that it will soon be too small to even joke about.