ONCE again a plan to rid the city of heaps of garbage has hit the snags. A report said that an agreement signed between a Chinese firm and the Karachi city government in 2007 has recently been cancelled. According to terms of the agreement the Chinese firm was to build a US $100 million solid waste treatment project.
The agreement also provided for the construction of facilities for garbage collection and transportation, and recycling. The Chinese company would run the plant after its completion. The Karachi city government would earmark waste treatment fees and special subsidies for the plant. The garbage treatment process would produce fertiliser and methane, which would then be used to produce electricity.
However, the hopes of the residents of Karachi about a cleaner and environment-friendly city in near future were once again dashed after the city government announced its decision to cancel the agreement saying that the Chinese firm had failed to meet its contractual obligations.
It was not the first time that a plan to clear the city of filth and dirt, garbage and solid waste had died a premature death. In the past also municipal administrations and later the present local government establishment had awarded several contracts to a number of firms for solid waste collection and disposal. In 2006 the Karachi city government tried to outsource solid waste management and awarded different contacts to several private firms. However, all these arrangements had to be terminated for one reason or the other.
According to a standard definition, solid waste is useless or unwanted material, which results from human or animal activity. There are many major sources of solid waste, which include municipal waste, hospital waste and industrial waste. Solid waste generated in urban areas of Pakistan consists of materials like paper, corrugated boxes, plants waste, food waste, clear and coloured glass, plastic goods, metals, wood, rubber, and other organic and non-organic materials.
Solid waste management (SWM) is the process of collection, transportation, storage, processing, recycling and disposal. There are several methods of solid waste management which include sanitary landfill, recycling, composting, waste to energy method, incinerators, etc.
It is estimated that urban areas of Pakistan generate about 60,000 tons of solid waste daily. Karachi, which is the largest city of the country with an area of 425,529 acres and home to a population of 16 million, generates around 6000 to 8000 tons of solid waste. Solid waste collection by government owned agencies in Pakistan cities currently averages only 50 per cent of waste generated daily. However for the cities to be relatively clean, at least 75 per cent of solid waste needs to be collected and disposed of.
Local governments are supposed to be responsible for garbage and solid waste collection and disposal. Under the present local government system, Karachi is divided into 18 towns and responsibility of collection, transportation and disposal of solid waste, including street sweeping lies with the town administration.
In addition to it, there are seven cantonment boards, Pakistan Steel, Karachi Port Trust, Port Qasim Authority, Sindh Industrial Trading Estate and Export Processing Zone, etc. which are responsible for collection of garbage and solid waste in their respective areas. Sanitary workers of municipal administration collect garbage from homes and deposit it at the nearest collection point or kachra kundi without pre-sorting the waste for recycling.
From there the waste is again collected and transported to landfill or unofficial dumping grounds. These trucks carrying the waste are often overflowing and spill lot of waste on the street before reaching the landfill site.
There are several ways to manage solid waste which include burning of waste at a scientifically managed landfill site, composting and recycling, or using/utilising the waste to produce energy.
It is officially claimed that there are properly and scientifically managed landfill sites in Karachi. The four so-called landfill sites at Jam Chakro at Surjani Town, Gond Pass near Hub River road, Rehri Road near Landhi and at Ibrahim Hyderi are nothing more than the dumping grounds. These landfill sites have no weighing bridge, and no facilities to monitor as to whether the trucks carrying the waste or garbage have dumped it or not. These improperly managed landfills can become a source of many environmental and health problems.
One of the most environmentally friendly methods of solid waste management is composting. Composting is the controlled biological decomposition of organic waste. That is nature's way of recycling organic waste into new soil, which can be used in vegetable and flower gardens and landscaping.
In Karachi the maj or sources of organic waste are markets like Sabzi Mandi which generates 100 tonnes per day (TPD) and the Empress Market which generates 70 TPD. High income localities of the city produce 60 per cent of organic waste and 12 per cent of garden waste.
While low income localities of Karachi produce 40 per cent of organic waste and four per cent of garden waste. All this organic waste provides excellent raw material for composting. In 1985 a composting plant was set up with the capacity of 400 tons per day, on 18 acres of land at North Karachi land dumping site. This second hand Irish plant functioned till 1989 but since then it is lying non-operational.
While successive municipal administrations have tried (and failed) to address the solid waste and garbage in Karachi, a nongovernmental organisation, Gul Bahao, has initiated a programme in which citizens are encouraged to sell their organic waste which is later composted to produce soil conditioning fertiliser. Another NGO, Pakistan Environmental Welfare and Waste Recycling Programme Trust, collects urban organic waste and presses out the liquid from it (for sale as liquid plant nutrients) and produces waste pellets.
An excellent strategy for waste management is to reduce, reuse and recycle .The aim of this strategy is to extract maximum practical benefits from the products and to generate minimum amount of waste.
The best way to reduce waste is to avoid or minimise its generation, in the first place. Less consumption of goods will create less waste. A considerable quantity of waste material is always re-useable. Reusing goods also results in conservation of resources. Then comes the recycling which means creating new things from used or waste items. Almost 20 to 30 per cent of solid waste contains material which can always be recycled.
In Karachi the scavengers are often seen collecting recyclable material from kachra kundis. There is an informal industry in Karachi dealing with re-useable material collected from garbage or solid waste. According to a conservative estimate, there are more than 1000 Kabaris in the city and some 300,000 people are directly or indirectly involved in recycling of solid waste in Karachi.
According to one estimate, around 44,500 tons of bread, 41,000 tons of bones,20,000 tons of glass, 3300 tons of metals, 245,000 tons of paper, 116,500 tons of plastic, 23,000 tons of textile, 1600 tons of wood and 994,000 tons of organic waste is produced annually in Karachi out of which over 50 percent is collected and recycled.
However, what is most hazardous and dangerous is that hospital and industrial waste is simply being treated as ordinary waste. It is estimated around 250,000 tones of medical waste is annually produced from the health care facilities in the country. The hospital waste can be classified into different categories according to World Health Organisation (WHO).
These are i) Infectious which include waste from surgery and autopsies on patients with infectious diseases; ii) Sharps which include disposable needles, syringes, saws, blades, broken glasses, nails or any other item that can cause cut or injury; iii) Pathological waste which includes tissues, organs, body parts, human flesh, fetuses, blood and body fluids, iv) Pharmaceutical waste, which include drugs and chemicals not used, spilled, outdated or contaminated; and v) Radioactive waste which includes solids, liquids and gaseous waste contaminated with radioactive substances used in diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
Incineration is a practical method of disposing of hazardous waste materials as biological medical waste and industrial waste. It is used to dispose of solid, liquid and gasseous waste. Incinerators convert waste material into heat, gas, steam and ash. Waste to energy or energy from waste are broad terms for facilities that burn waste in a furnace or boiler to generate heat steam and electricity. The Karachi city government had installed two incineration plants at Mewa Shah each with the capacity of 1000KG per hour in the year 1995-96. Both the plants are now operated by a private contractor.
According to Karachi city government, there are 1379 health care units out of which 140 health care units are disposing of their waste through incineration plants run by it. Remaining health care units are disposing of their waste along with the municipal waste posing serious health hazards in the city which goes unchecked. Hospitals which are operating their own incinerators are Civil Hospital, Jinnah Hospital, Liaquat National Hospital, and Aga Khan Hospital.
While, the uncollected and untreated solid waste in any form is a potential health and environmental hazard, once treated and processed scientifically it can become valuable asset, a potential source of energy and other re-cycled products.
In several countries now solid waste is being utilised to produce energy and fuel. But in Pakistan where the energy crisis is turning from bad to worse the government has failed to pay due attention to this potential source of energy.
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