A way to live with the demon

I have often wondered whether I am doing the right thing by using anything that looks like plastic or buying anything remotely associated with it.

Bhagalpur may commission a waste-to-energy plant

The small municipality of Bhagalpur in Bihar is considering setting up a waste-to-energy plant in the city. On February 19, the city municipal corporation selected one of the proposals submitted to it to manage the city's waste. The proposals were submitted in response to a request sent out by the municipality in December last year.

Concrete invasion

Sri Lanka’s largest city was once dotted with freshwater marshes. The picturesque beauty of the wetland areas, say elders, was breathtaking. Not any more. The marshes have been filled to construct buildings. The remaining ones are highly polluted and taken over with invasive plant species.

Cash clogged

Why excreta matters

Water is life and sewage tells its life story. This is the subject of the Citizens’ Seventh Report on the State of India’s Environment, Excreta Matters: How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers and drowning in its own excreta. It has a seemingly simple plot: it only asks where Indian cities get their water from and where does their waste go. But this is not just a question or answer about water, pollution and waste. It is about the way Indian cities (and perhaps other parts of the world that are similarly placed) will develop. It is about the paradigm of growth that’s sustainable and affordable.

Too hot to handle

India has tightened guidelines for storage of toxic industrial waste. But is it enough? A fire at Ankleshwar forced India to rethink how it handles hazardous waste. Drums carrying dangerous industrial sludge flew amid leaping flames and burst in the air at a waste storage at the industrial complex in Bharuch district of Gujarat on April 3 last year. Ash fell all around. People in nearby villages were told to evacuate; many suffered coughing, headache, nausea and burning sensation in the nose and throat.

Let there be CFL

Arnab Pratim Dutta

Interstate dirty dumpers

Seventy kilometres from Bangalore, a lorry veered off the main road and headed in an unusual direction towards groundnut fields in Yadagere village of Karnataka's Tumkur district. It stopped at an unsown field in the middle of nowhere. Torches were flashing in the dark. A flurry of activities followed, disturbing the midnight quiet. Some people jumped out of the lorry and began offloading barrels after barrels. Others with spades and shovels emptied them into 10-foot-deep pits in the field.

Costs and benefits of India's waste disposal options

There's nothing august about Mumbai