By Maitphang Syiem
As someone said, to understand a problem one must begin with questions. For a mathematician the questions and moves are always to find the X factor. So, lo and behold the question is on Fly-tipping – to get the meaning, one should break the word into two “Fly” and “Tipping”. We’ve heard of words such as “on the fly” which relate to motion or movement and “Tipping” in this context is not about the gratuity thing we show when we leave a restaurant. Here it means “Throwing.” Summarising this layman’s deduction, it points to throwing something on the move. In a civic sense “Fly-tipping” is an act of illegal dumping of waste in places and you know better which places. We have a unique culture of practising cleanliness perhaps which should have earned accolades from all but there is also an underlying concern which must be addressed, that is, “Not in my backyard,” attitude and the issue of “Fly-Tipping” coincides with the context. We treat our own backyard in the best possible ways but we leave our streets and roads in a mess. One should perhaps take it this way – that the streets, the roads, the footpaths are kind of an ecosystem. They too have an important role which affects our day-to-day activities, therefore to maintain that ecosystem we must treat them equally just like our own backyard. Isn’t this the rational thing to do?
Our localities, communities no doubt are trying their best to maintain such civic norms and of course the prominent places would look clean but yet we still have pockets, unseen and unknown places such as drains, arterial roads etc., where wastes are continuously illegally dumped. The obvious places would be the drains, corners etc. And this is true if one would just take a walk around such places within the city. One will find the mess and when the drains get clogged, we all know what the resulting consequences are. Now going further with the issue of “Fly-tipping” it does appear that it occurs among both educated and uneducated folks. What could be the causes? There could be many reasons and it should be the responsibility of every individual to introspect as to why in spite of being educated we allow our conscience to Fly- tip.
In this globalised world none is uneducated but when it comes to waste management somewhere the thought arises as to why we are lagging in civic sense. Perhaps there are problems related to waste collection services. Somewhere the assessment on the service area or the coverage of each collection utility should be made because that ratio should be balanced. We can’t have a single truck for a thousand households. Further, in this connection our city has areas where roads are narrow and inaccessible for trucks to enter which in turn leads to ineffective collection on the part of the concerned authorities and on the part of the user availing the collection services. Hence waste keeps on piling and when the waste reaches saturation level, we tend to resort to ways to dispose of the piled up wastes. However, another reason would be laziness or missed timings so missed timings is directly proportional to waste piling up. To dispose of the waste we resort to Fly tipping.
We’ve seen many noble initiatives in the city taken up by many concerned organisations, individuals and societies to tackle the problem of waste, particularly solid waste, and the cleaning of the once pristine rivers of the city. The reality is that they can’t keep on cleaning every time, because the next day the waste will resurge. So, the question here is why is the waste resurging from time to time? Everyone talks about the once crystal waters, the aesthetic values of the rivers in the city but few will have the concern to rejuvenate and to act upon a reiterated simple solution which is “waste segregation” and responsible waste disposal. Now here comes the question as to how environmentally educated we are. Perhaps the ugly truth is that our environmental awareness is confined to only our backyards but not on a larger scale. It’s important that we understand every entity in the environment as a unit which is part of the whole and that each unit has a designated role. So it is not just our own backyards; it is bigger than what we think. If we can keep our own backyards clean why can’t we go further beyond our own backyards? Introspect!
There is another concern on philosophical terms and that is our ethics which in this context points to environmental ethics. In fact this is a specialised subject in itself, therefore a point to emphasise here is that the kind of awareness we need the most must also engulf matters of ethics towards the larger picture beyond our backyards. It is fine to know how to keep our surroundings clean, planting trees etc., but it is also equally important to understand the ethics as to why we are doing it. Along with the aforementioned factors of Fly-tipping, the ethics involved is also another major reason to consider. Perhaps if one realises one’s ethics or understands the environmental ethics, that person’s conscience would not allow him/her to commit the act of Fly-tipping. Along such awareness it is imperative to inculcate environmental ethics in letter and spirit. It must seep into our grey matter, into our neurons and then only we can at least reach the aspired level of keeping our surroundings clean.
Furthermore, this matter also connects with the level of social development of our society. All development is important, but the ugly fact is that the word development for us is confined only to infrastructure. The point here is that environmental ethics and the kind of awareness all revolve around the realm of social development. The higher the level of social development the higher the responsibility for social action. We can see a living example in Mizoram and the civic sense vis a vis traffic. This speaks much about their ethics and level of social development. Their drivers don’t honk or overtake on the roadways because this is not part of their ethics. Their conscience does not allow them to disrupt public order; they feel embarrassed to commit such an act. Taking a cue from such examples, why don’t we try to cultivate the ethics of going beyond our backyards?
As a matter of fact, perhaps the issue of poor waste management that we are facing is not just a techno-managerial problem but on the larger scale it is a socio-environmental problem. Therefore, the qualitative data on such issues must also be taken into consideration to understand and to formulate effective measures. We can understand that all concerned are going all out to solve one of the burgeoning issues that the city is facing. But for now, keeping that in mind let us start by educating ourselves, and share our understanding from time to time. Let us go all out as individuals to keep our surroundings clean beyond our backyards and not resort to Fly-tipping.
(The writer is a Geospatial Technology Expert and all views expressed are personal)