I FELT good reading the report on plans to build sanitary landfills (“Plans in the works to build sanitary landfills”, Nation, The Star, Jan 24; online at bit.ly/star_landfills) with the intention of moving onto waste-to-energy concept plants using anaerobic digesters and biodigestion. The government has clearly defined the problem of ever-mounting waste and set out to adopt technology and waste management techniques to rectify it.
However, the good feeling turned bad when I read the adjacent news report on the meagre percentage of waste that is recycled every year: 0.06% or 1,800 tonnes out of three million tonnes. The rest apparently ends up in landfills or is burned. A lot of plastic waste also ends up in our waters – about 30,000 tonnes annually is disgorged into our seas, according to National Geographic. This makes us the eighth largest plastic dumper in the world, a fact which our government has admitted to.