Life can be trying when you live near a dump
Few people care what happens afterward to the leftovers from items they consume. Once they drop the rubbish in their hands into a bin or whatever, that’s the end of it as far as they are concerned.
But a lot of people do care, particularly those responsible for waste disposal and those who are unfortunate enough to live close to dump sites where the leftovers usually end up.
I live a few kilometres from a huge dump site. On some days when the wind blows in the right — or rather, the wrong — direction, I smell the pungent odour of rubbish decaying. Not a very pleasant experience, I can tell you that.
Imagine, if you can, what the people living close to the dumps have to endure.
It’s amazing how tolerant people can be about their foul environment. But we all have our limits, which is what recently happened to the folk living around a dump site in Samut Prakan and another in Hat Yai in Songkhla.
In Samut Prakan, the Central Administrative Court ordered the Praeksa administrative organisation to revoke permits for a huge landfill after locals complained of suffering foul smells for ages.
This particular landfill two years ago suffered a massive fire that spread foulsmelling smoke to wide areas and drove local residents to flee.
In Hat Yai, residents around a garbage incinerator have had enough after breathing foul-smelling air and toxic smoke for more than two years.
Their complaint proved even more urgent after tests found excessive quantities of toxic substances including dioxin, hydrochloride and cadmium in the environment.
It’s no secret that household and industrial waste have long posed a serious problem for the country. Practically every locality has the problem with garbage accumulating daily and nowhere to go.
Samut Prakan is in dire straits. Statistics in 2014 show the province had accumulated more than 10 million tonnes of garbage, a good portion of which was industrial waste.
Problems elsewhere are less severe but daunting nonetheless. Phuket had 900,000 tonnes and counting. Nakhon Si Thammarat had 1.2 million tonnes. Hat Yai municipality by itself had more than a million tonnes. And so on and so on.
Mind you, these are official figures which do not take into account garbage strewn on roadsides and in illegal dumps.
The mind boggles at the magnitude of the problem. So, what is to be done? With land prices at a premium in most places, landfills can no longer cope. The only available option is incineration, particularly waste-to-energy technology.
But as the one in Hat Yai suggests, it can serious environmental problems when poorly managed.
Environmentalists have long campaigned against incineration as a solution. They point out that smoke and ash emitted by the chimneys of incinerators include acid gases, nitrogen oxide, heavy metals, particulates, and dioxin, which is a carcinogen.
Some say the technology is not practical in developing countries because of high organic content and moisture in the waste. On top of that, it is expensive and requires skilled staff to run and maintain the facilities.
I think we can all agree that the problem of garbage has reached a critical level. As such, extraordinary measures are required to deal with it. Under the circumstances, then, incineration as a solution — even as a stop gap — should not be ruled out.
The country’s history of landfilling has clearly demonstrated that it cannot keep up with the problem and has contributed to worsening environmental problems with its smell and leachate.
Landfills are also a significant source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is several times more potent for global warming than CO2.
Incineration has a side benefit in that the heat generated can be used to produce electricity.
But before plunging into adopting the technology to solve our waste problem, there are a number of considerations to be made.
As the Hat Yai fiasco shows, running a waste-to-energy incineration plant requires skilful staff and management. Otherwise, it will end up a costly failure — economically, environmentally and socially.
Technical issues, which are also social issues, such as recycling and garbage sorting programmes must be put in place to ensure that the waste is fit to go into the incinerator.
A serious obstacle facing projects of this type is the NIMBY syndrome; nobody wants a facility like this in their neighbourhood.
But even more serious is the lack of public trust that the authorities can maintain tight control over the operation. We have plenty of examples to confirm our fears.
Public opposition often arises because of the top-down decision-making process. The people almost always are excluded from any meaningful role as authorities give lip service to public participation.
If authorities want to find viable solutions, their attitudes need to change. People’s lives and well-being are at stake. They have to be involved in finding solutions.
However, even if all goes well, this is not a permanent or even a good enough way to solve the problem. More sustainable solutions come from measures to reduce waste in the first place.
Imagine, if you can, what the people living close to the dumps have to endure.