Do you ever wonder where all your trash ends up? We throw tons of garbage into our trash cans everyday and completely forget about it. It seems to magically disappear out of our homes and we never have to deal with it again. At least, that’s what I thought until I went on a “Garbage Yatra’ all across north Chennai.

As one of Transparent Chennai’s initiatives, I went about looking for dump sites all over north Chennai. Mr. Paramanandam, a very knowledgeable field worker from Exnora, was gracious enough to take me around the city to examine the solid waste management situation. Paramanandam explained that there are four steps to disposal of garbage. The first step is Primary Collection, which involves picking up garbage from each doorstep on every street. Smaller vehicles are used for easier accessibility. These vehicles assemble at a collection point where they transfer the garbage to larger vehicles. Garbage is then taken to transfer stations and temporarily placed at these locations. A transfer station is a site used for the temporary deposition of garbage, before it is transported to a larger landfill. Gargage in Chennai is taken to one of 8 transfer stations. Each zone is assigned a particular transfer station. Garbage from all of the transfer stations then taken to one of two major dump sites in Chennai – Kodungaiyur in the north and Perungudi in the South. However, I learned on the field trip that there are several other unofficial dump sites all over the city, apart from Kodungiyur and Perungudi.

Paramanandam explained to me that solid waste management in the city is a huge disaster. The problem arises because of Chennai’s large population and sizable floating population, consisting of traders and workers traveling in and out of the city on a daily basis. Chennai churns out around 3500 tonnes of garbage each day. The Chennai city corporation clears our around 65% of this garbage everyday, but is unable to handle the rest due to lack of man power and facilities. Additionally, residents fail to comply with garbage pick-up times, by not putting out their garbage before 7:30am, as per the Corporation’s schedule. Hence, the remaining 35% of garbage ends up along road sides, in water bodies and even storm water drains. Thus, residents of Chennai are posed which a host of serious problems, such as mosquitoes, ground water pollution, diseases and flooding.

Our first stop was the Basin Bridge Transfer station. I couldn’t help but notice the putrid air around us as soon as we got close to the transfer station. There was a large slum across the street from the transfer station. The slum dwellers, I was told, use the station as a public toilet everyday, making living conditions around the area worse than it already is. I was warned against taking pictures or notes conspicuously at the transfer station. I noticed a few trucks going in and out of the station, carrying mounds of garbage. I was told that all of this garbage is taken to the dump yard un-segregated. Though small efforts have been made at separating degradable and non-degradable garbage, the corporation does not have the resources or the willingness to handle this effectively and ends up mixing the garbage together before transferring it to the dump yards.

After basin bridge, we drove along the harbor on Raypuram Beach Road in north Chennai. The beauty of the harbor was marred by islands of garbage all along the coast. We then drove up to Ennur and stopped at the Ennur thermal power station. Every so often, I would notice small bodies of water along the side of the road covered with water lilies and other beautiful vegetation. Most of them were either entirely covered with garbage or were on their way to becoming unofficial dump sites. Paramanandam explained, that water bodies are often the first place where industrial wastes get dumped. The highly industrialized northern part of Chennai suffers from severe ground and surface water pollution.

We continued on to a few municipalities and town panchayats in north Chennai. Most of north Chennai seemed to be underdeveloped with respect to infrastructure and urban development. Garbage in each of these local bodies is managed separately from the corporation. There was a common theme to all of these municipalities and panchayats – poor waste management. Garbage seemed to be everywhere, blanketing ponds and lakes, and burning in mounds on the side of the road.

The climax of our trip was the visit to the 360-acre Kodungiyur dump yard – one of two huge official dumpsites in Chennai, where half of Chennai’s garbage ends up. I could smell the stench at this site well before we got close to it. The yard was enclosed by a large wall that extended far and wide to hide the awful site that lay within. Unfortunately, I was strictly forbidden from taking pictures. I took a quick peak into the yard and saw huge mountains of garbage for miles. The weight of the garbage that is dumped by each truck is measured before it goes into the yard. New garbage is constantly dumped over existing garbage, and no initiatives are taken to clear the old garbage and rehabilitate the dump site.

One of our last stops was the Koyambedu market dump, which is a large, unofficial dump site that is not handled by the Chennai corporation or any municipalities or panchayats. This dump sites houses all of the degradable waste that comes out of one of Asia’s largest perishable goods markets. Paramanandam described this waste as “good garbage,” because it could be composted and used to produce energy. However, it rots in a large ground at the moment.

Koyembedu Market

Koyembedu Market

The Koyambedu Market dump

The field trip showed me that the trash that we throw out does not disappear out of our lives, but affects us every day by befouling our roads, polluting air and water, causing diseases and, finally, destroying the beauty of our city. According to Paramanandam, the first step to better solid waste management is for residents to say no to garbage. A few tips that he gave me were to carry your own bag when you go grocery shopping and avoid using plastic bags, buy items with minimal packaging, avoid purchasing disposable items, reuse items such as plastic or glass bottles, newspaper, etc, recycle, and compost your kitchen waste.

Written by Vaishnavi Narasimhan

The team of Transparent Chennai sits in a comfortable air-conditioned office with a beautiful cafeteria, serene environment, excellent infrastructure with ergonomic chairs and clean, hygienic toilets. The last one on the list, i.e. washrooms, is something that can easily escape our attention. Many times I hear my colleagues say – “What an awesome cafeteria!”and “What a comfortable chair!”, but never heard anybody say that they are glad to have washrooms in this office. I suppose this is because most of us presume such basic needs and services to be in place. But what about other residents of Chennai, especially the less privileged ones – workers in the informal sector, residents living in slums, employees at workplaces without any access to sanitation? This is where public toilets come to the rescue of these not so privileged classes. Has the government succeeded in fulfilling these basic needs of its people? This is the question that daunted our team for a long time, and very soon enough became a new project, a new idea, a new reason for the team to get busy – ‘Access to Sanitation for Chennai Residents’

A few times when our office toilets are locked up temporarily for maintenance, everyone looks extremely worried and distracted. Now just imagine the plight of those workers, especially women workers, who are constantly worried about such things! How can they concentrate on their work or for that matter lead a hygienic and healthy life if adequate sanitation facilities are not provided to them? Transparent Chennai decided to find out how these people feel about this aspect of their lives.

1. Behind the scenes: Somya, Sam, Vaishnavi and Muthu.

The first step towards figuring out an answer is to have data to look at. One of our brightest interns went about the city collecting data on public toilets built by the Corporation of Chennai, and other private toilets, if any. Chennai city is divided into 10 Zones and the data told us that the number of toilets at present stands at 572. With each zone having a population of around 4lakhs, this number is quite disturbing. Further, while some zones have as many as 100 toilets, some barely have 20! This is all the more shocking. Never mind, we thought. Let’s go and talk to these people first. We chose Zone 4 from the list having the least number of toilets – 20 for our interaction.

Owner of a toilet poses for a snap

While the results of the survey/interviews will be disclosed later, I would really like to talk about our experience. First, the list given to us by the Corporation is far from being comprehensive. With only the street names with us, it was extremely difficult to locate these on the maps and Sam, I and Muthu had to sit with it for hours to figure it out on the map. Second, there were some street names which were at multiple locations on the map, making our search all the more difficult. But this was only the beginning. Once located on the map, the same had to be discovered in the field. Third, some of the streets did not even have a mention on any of the maps we referred to. So, we just went blindly to Zone 4 and began our search. I remember a certain Jagannathan street which we searched for almost an hour on the field. We kept going round and round the same roads and finally found this mysteriously hidden street to our relief. I am sure if asked to go back, none of us would have a clue about it. Probably the GPS points that we noted down at each location would come to our rescue.

Finally, the questionnaires had to be revised multiple times to suit our needs after taking into account the observations made on our first field visit. All in all, it was a really enriching yet tiring experience. The Chennai heat was gruesome and the rains only made the visits worse, with water clogging, traffic jams and blocked sewers. However, the people we interviewed were extremely friendly and welcoming and many offered to serve us tea and coffee in spite of their poor economic status. Children were really enthusiastic and grinned and laughed, probably more than I used to when I was a child. The people and their lives touched our hearts and made the entire experience warm and memorable. One thing which was pretty much obvious from the time we commenced this study is that, it is extremely difficult in this city to get any information, be it some basic information on public toilets.

Posted by Somya Sethuraman