Festival Of Flamingos In Mumbai

We are in danger of getting buried under the weight of our own

Garbage. Time to wake up and act – Simple solutions of segregating

Our home garbage can help a lot.

Beautiful flamingos – the national bird of the Bahamas – have their largest population in the world on the lakes of East Africa. There’s a permanent population of about two

million of these charming birds in that region; most of it being in Northern Tanzania. In India their concentration is mostly in the salt deserts of the Rann of Kutch. Mumbai has seen these migratory birds only since the 1990s and thereby lies a Story of Sustainability!

As the city grew in the 1970s and 1980s so did the volume of untreated sewage in the Thane Creek nurturing the Algae that is almost staple food – other than shrimp – for flamingos. So their presence kept increasing – I guess through word-of-mouth-publicity just as it happens amongst humans – and increased to an astounding 1,30,000 in the winter of 2022. During the last decade or so, local residents have been celebrating the ‘Gorgeous Pink Brigade’. So, here is an interesting case of pollution generated by individual and civic neglect (untreated sewage) proving a boon for the birds. Strange are the ways of nature – at times beyond comprehension – because the same pollution has been lethal for fish. Nearly half the species of fish in the creek had disappeared between the 1980s to the year 2000. Look at another aspect. Mangroves – that zealously guarded crucial barrier against soil erosion by the constant ramming of sea waves – are now growing rapidly into the sea and making the creek narrower.

Flamingos are indeed a beautiful sight; my friends living in the vicinity of Thane Creek, who have had the privilege to witness the spectacular ‘advancing army of pink’ on winter mornings just can't stop raving about it. Exponential increase in the number of these gorgeous visitors to Mumbai is truly a blessing. I hope and pray that the ‘flamingo sanctuary’ continues to thrive and prosper. It might have happened as an ‘accidental marvel’ and an ‘inadvertent creation’ but it would be great if our planners and environmentalists can agree on logical steps and ensure that it can continue in an exclusive zone and, at the same time, fish diversity is unharmed. I am confident our environment scientists will find answers.

Anyway, the Festival of Flamingos is just a pleasant interlude; let me now address the bigger issue of ‘waste management’. It is a shame that some of us are utterly callous about throwing out plastic packets, beer bottles and other packing materials that land up in the sea – or add to the growing mountains of trash, paradoxically called landfills – but with recent rising concerns about 'sustainability', there is hope that this criminal activity will reduce and humanity will become more concerned about mother earth – our only home in the enormous universe.

It is estimated that every urban citizen in the country generates about 600 grams of solid waste every single day. Considering that a lot of our population lives in villages and probably has little or no access to modern day packaging – despite the small-pack onslaught of shampoo, soap, toothpaste, biscuits et al by aggressive marketing companies – and are also unlikely to waste food, our national per capita waste generation should be around 250 grams per day. With an estimated population of 142 crores it adds up to about 355 tons a day or 130 million tons annually – enough to drown us all under its weight unless we make it our religion to manage our waste by assiduously segregating it at source – at the point where it is generated, meaning our homes, factories, commercial establishments, eateries, restaurants, hotels and ensuring that the very minimum reaches the growing mountains of landfills in all cities and nothing flows into the rivers and the oceans.

Ideally not more than 10 per cent should reach the landfills. Have a look at your waste bins at home; 20 to 30 per cent of it is accounted for by dry waste – old newspapers, magazines, glass, plastic – the disposal of which is relatively easy. Our efficient network of kabariwalas pick it up from the doorstep and most of it gets recycled. Out of the balance 70 odd per cent, almost 60 per cent is ‘wet waste’ or bio waste that merits processing and conversion to compost and high quality manure. We should either do this at home itself or at community centres organised by RWAs with the help of municipal authorities, NGOs and commercial establishments engaged in the business of waste management. Special care needs to be taken for a small component of e-waste and medical waste generated in every house.

These need specialised handling by experts and must not be mixed with either the dry waste going to the kabariwala or the wet waste for composting. We should make it our duty to keep these separately and hand over to specialised agencies designated by the government authorities. E-waste would typically include discarded battery cells, LED bulbs, tube lights, discarded cell phones, calculators, TV sets… anything ‘electronic’ with which the modern day homes are inundated. Almost every big city has places for handling these and scientific deep burial of whatever cannot be salvaged for recycling.

Medical (or hospital) waste are things like bandages, baby and adult diapers, sanitary napkins, used band aids, cotton and surgical dressing as well as syringes, surgical gloves, catheters, PPP clothing – in short anything that can potentially carry infection. It is advisable to dispose of these also to authorised collection agencies that would carefully incinerate or sanitise these. Several hospitals too do not have their own incineration plants and outsource handling of their waste.

Simple little things that can save us from big problems.