Lavasa’s journey downhill

Lavasa is called a hill station but does not offer the cool comfort of one. In May and June temperatures touch nearly 40°C— not an ideal summer getaway. In nearby Mahabaleshwar, temperatures rarely cross 35°C.

Light on mercury

Rupa collects CFL every day. Each bulb gets her `3, and a whiff of mercury vapour (Photo: Ruhi Kandhari)Sifting through Delhi’s municipal rubbish every day, Anwarul Shaikh and Rupa Begum often find broken CFL bulbs mixed in kitchen and other domestic waste. The compact fluorescent lamps have replaced incandescent bulbs in garbage mounds in the past couple of years, Rupa said, picking a few up. The glass tube and plastic end cap of a CFL fetch them up to Rs 3. Of late, Anwarul has been complaining of restricted vision. “It’s difficult to recognise distance between objects and me. I keep bumping into waste,” he said.

Weak rules, weaker regulators

A blanket of smog envelopes Kuarmunda and Bonai subdivisions of Odisha’s Sundargarh district every morning. Area residents attribute it to emissions from sponge iron factories nearby that switch off their emission control devices—electrostatic precipitators (ESPs)—at night. The reason these factories get away with such offences is weak rules and weaker enforcement.

Restore saltwater lake, says court

THE Nagpur bench of the Mumbai high court has ordered restoration of the world’s third largest meteorite lake in the Buldhana district of Maharashtra. A recent study by a group appointed by the court, pointed out that Lonar lake is a dumping ground for raw sewage from localities in the vicinity, making it unfit. The court formed two committees to oversee the restoration work on September 29.

Unmanaged waste in Tripura

Poor policy management and mushrooming of pathology labs is hindering safe disposal of biomedical waste in Tripura. Despite being the first Indian state to set up biomedical waste management system from collection to final disposal, even at the Primary Health Centre level, Tripura has failed to regulate the same.

Nagpur’s bin-free plans in dumps

NAGPUR'S year-old dream of becoming garbage bin free is nowhere close to realisation.

Hussain Sagar goes to toxic waste

FOR the past five years Hyderabad has been trying to clean the Hussain Sagar Lake, separating the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad in Andhra Pradesh.

Apocalyptic vision

As a kid, Jonathan Watts had nightmares about China.

Mango resistance

Sushil Kumar Lodhi, 32, walks about Dashehari village with newspaper clippings, which carried news of his grandfather’s death. His grandfather suffered a heart attack on his way back from Lucknow.

Officials unmoved by court order

A high court order has not deterred a distillery in Sitamarhi district of Bihar from discharging effluents into the Bagmati. On January 27, the Patna High Court had ordered the Bihar State Pollution Control Board (spcb) and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to check pollution from Righa Sugar Company distillery and take appropriate action.