So no matter how you take it aljazeera will bring you the news and Current Affairs that matter to aljazeera. This 65 metre High Mountain of rubbish in india symbolizes a rapidly expanding global problem what should countries do with their garbage and how can they reduce the amount they produce every year this is inside story. Teller i must say its become a problem of global proportions according to the world bank around 2000000000. 00 tonnes of waste is produced every year and rudd leaders are struggling to figure out what to do with it all so that they buried recycle that was shipped off to another country we begin our look at the options an easterly india where they are fighting to contain a 65 nice a high amount of rubbish that gets larger every year and as of parana reports. A mountain of waste this is where 2000 tons of east duddies of rubbish is dumped every day youre not People Living around the site say its affecting their lives. As you can see the smell here is unbeatable if the wind blows towards us but its difficult to eat food at home it is such a mess here the rubbish stop doesnt just smell bad its also dangerous me time gas from the way sparks fires releasing toxic fumes. Began as a land for the my 984 that reached its capacity needed 20 years ago. Engineered lengthen it means that you will have a big hole which is dug out and that it is lined with no one was so that your dock sick of chemicals which comes out from garbage does not leak into the soil and cause what the pollution but in gaza where there is no such thing trucks continue to dump rubbish here despite delis govern abandon them after a part of the hell a collapsed 2 years ago killing 2 people. This is a cruel joke this is contempt of the people to sponsor one point to begin the site they have installed for today after the border. We asked the east Delhi Municipal Corporation why this is happening but because of the ignored they were with us so we got to new to. Dispose of all of. Its estimated delhi produces 14500. 00 tons of waste every day the problem of waste isnt confined to the cities rubbish dump started around 3000. 00 worth of the rubbish produced daily isnt collected leaving it logging on the street and other than space junk because child 3 manages this recycling center and says waste isnt just the governments responsibility or that is actually we feel that resegregation should begin to pull if people start segregating reist then rest can be recycled properly and the direct consequence will be that garbage mountains like the one it wont be necessary at all the east Delhi Municipal Corporation has started testing of recycling program in 3 areas this year they hope to be on the top of the rest of the region within one year. They also say theyll start clearing dasi put in september and some of its waste will be used to build a national highway elizabeth purana aljazeera east delhi. Well lets bring in our guests now in new delhi we have. He is the c. E. O. Of the council on Energy Environment and water in oxford we have Sharon George shes electric eel university who specializes in Green Technology and in hong kong via skype we have chia he is the director of the institute of Public Policy at the Hong Kong University of science and Technology Welcome to you all let me start with you are not what weve just seen there in his report how widespread is the lack of waste processing in india and one of the Biggest Challenges that the Government Faces in trying to address it. India is one of the fastest urbanizing countries in the world just its urban population would be the worlds 3rd largest country by population so against this kind of massive push of people to the cities there is certainly a major challenge of managing solid waste. And most of the whizzed cities dont doesnt get processed so what that does is it has an impact on the local environment in terms of the landfill and the bethanys and the sions etc it also has an impact in terms of the last Economic Opportunity that the good get if we decide to use ways does a resource rather than only something to throw it. Well are not are not what were seeing in india is a global problem so lets also take a look at some of the global figures now the World Bank Says around 278000000 tons of waste as recycled every year and recycling is now estimated to be a 200000000000. 00 industry now it was china that once led the Global Recycling trade but it said it banned waste imports just under 2 years ago because of the threat to the environment since then other countries such as malaysia thailand indonesia and techie had been taking in that rubbish but then now concerns they could become dumping grounds for rich countries thailand is imposing a ban by 2021 and the malaysians also cracking down on garbage imports so with all that said professor Chen Hong Kong let me ask you about that chinese ban because they said it was about environmental reasons and how much of this is about the environment versus politics and economics. I dont know why people think it has to do with the politics of all if it is it is the great politics is a great it is a great politics to play. I think the reason that china decided to ban the this garbage in port from other countries told me due to this era of the concerns. Every year at the by processing this waste much of that are sick and but waste and a lot of people get sick and that many of them are killed and also by processing the these waves and it takes a lot of energy and release is the greed amount of Greenhouse Gases also that i pointed out the contribution of china to the Global Climate change the so this is going to consider all these problems environmental problems the plan to tame the problems of Public Health problems i think the time is a government of 535. 00 to be decided to do the right thing which is to ban is the garbage in the border from other countries well were hearing about the toxicity of all of this and sharon let me ask you a lot of the waste thats being shipped as a stand to be to be recycled right but not all waste can be recycled but like a low grade plastics for instance compu recycled whats the proportion of way if it cant be recycled all disposed of safely. Well i think we just discovery now that what we thought was be recycled what we thought was recycled is is a lot less than we thought because what technically is a different question between the proportion that is able to be recycled and that that is actually able to be recycled because its not just about whether it can technically be recycled its whether it is and whether those facilities are in place so a lot of our packaging in in the west is is technically recyclable but actually its very expensive to do that and the part of the problem is that weve been exporting poor quality waste exacerbating these problems that weve just been talking about and basically exporting our problem without dealing with it ourselves and so sharon you were telling me about this the poor waste thats being exported and because of that there is this developing political dynamic as well and i want to pay you a couple of sound bites from World Leaders whove been pushing back against that waste trade. We will declare war we will load the containers on a ship and tell canada that your garbage is on the way prepare a grand reception eat it if you want to. You know prudy seen too much we and you have a problem trying to get rid of the we len feels then all that doesnt serve any purpose anymore you can a burn the weeds because of the the small and all the pollution pollutants so you it is costly and pay for Research Countries to send their wishes to poor countries simply because the poor countries have no choice may be. A little to their economy so theres some pretty strong rhetoric that were hearing there both from president to say of the philippines and promised a lot to mohamed from malaysia i own up i want to ask here even though were hearing this strong rhetoric there is an economic incentive as Mahathir Mohamad that just acknowledged for this waste trade so why are we seeing this push back now. I think the pushback is happening for 2 reasons one is that as one of the other on this was also saying what is potentially recyclable does not always get recycled so the Economic Opportunity on people might not always be converting in practice the 2nd reason is that you have to still establish a massive supply chain of with segregation with processing recycling then reusing in products which can then again be exported out unless that is dead. And you keep increasing the amount of ways that keeps coming in from other countries there is going to be like the pushback on top of all of that that is what i was saying earlier there is the internal pressures of increasing up in addition not just in a country like india but all emerging economy is whether or not for the weather in asia which have to do with their own waste so i think it is important to understand that if we just limit this to its not my problem as noise and as long as i can just transfer it somewhere else that will not solve this either at a global level or even at a national or a city level within our countries we have to remove the factor from waste and begin the recycling the segregation the processing at home thats where the supply chain has to begin our number i want to ask you a follow up on not because if waste is processed differently its not just an Environmental Health issue but there are people here and their livelihoods who feed themselves and because of the money they way they they make from picking through trash and i believe in india its less than a percent of the population point one percent that still more than a 1000000 people so what happens to the people who are waste because and live off the waste what happens to them and their livelihoods if waste is processed differently. I think there have been actually a lot of initiatives even within india not country but in several cities where the same socalled rock pickers who are actually going through the garbage dumps with their bare hands are actually being retrained in to us as kind of the workers who would work in proper recycling segregation sorting facilities so while as soon as you think of this as an either or either you let them continue as they are leaving these nasty brutish and short lives or you do with segregation and recycling in a modern form that either are or will not obviously create the right political and economic incentives that the Community Level weve got to take the same communities either give them alternative livelihood of genitives or retrain and rescale them and thats what is happening in cities in several cities across india of course this has to be scaled up this is what i meant earlier as well that we need to remove that effect we can only treat this as someone else is going to treat waste which means that i took Community Level we need to reestablish a social contract between the waste processors the communities the residents and the state once unless the social contract emerges this will always feel like someone else is literally dumping their rubbish on us so with things potentially changing a little bit in india let me ask you professor che about whats happening in china so china used to take Something Like 70 percent of the wild waste and now its dealing with its own waste 67000000. 00 tonnes of domestic trash every year whats it doing with the talking rubbish now if anything actually changing this since this ban wasnt post and 28 same. You know that is go back to the point it does raise the economic the case i think that there is a case that for the export or trash from the rich countries because by exporting this a little. Way so youve got to save a lot of money to process this waste. The developed game the poor countries side out the case and hardly be babes of course you know we can talk about the lab a hood and i mean it just reminds me. Of here holmes 181 or 80 years ready ago there were all of the war all opium and you can say economic case for opium trade from the british. The. Company is to. About economic a case it is just economically about morality so i think pretty much the same saying caves were talking about here with the waste and now china is taking this waste issue very seriously and china has just released the other nafta regulation and the National Strategy to develop. Ways of free society and star rating in it too does as of cities for pilot the cities for this Waste Management republic and here ringback recently in cities like shanghai beijing sorting is a garbage hospital level becoming a real big thing so starting with you know with the whole level and the personal level and they go where this this Waste Management bid higher than ever and in every city and to give all the facilities to process the waste and not just you know dumping and there are a lot of feel and also. To process here in the deeper levels so i think beat it as you just mentioned china is also all to bottle up in the whole industry by the investing into Waste Management and waste of processing so that the. The you can also hear it for our own good time in places and people are you know protesting against the waste of passivity its clear in china i think from the government the business and this is the will of the Society Levels you can hear this is a really big pumpin. Waste management is developing a group that i want to bring sharon in here because were hearing about potentially things changing and in china and india these developing countries but now that develops a country is struggling to find places to ship their rubbish to what are they doing with it all sharon and what are their options. Well at the moment i think especially in the u. K. Were kind of relieved from the realisation that the destination that were where we thought our waste was going is that our waste just wasnt going where we thought it and were finding you know these shocking statistics about finding ways dogged and dumped into the environment where people have been separating the waste and households and thinking the do the right thing so that has a negative impact on peoples behaviors so in the u. K. Were kind of trying to deal with with tightening up the whole way supply chain and making sure that those 2 diligence in place to make sure that things are disposed of properly but were also looking at solutions on our own soil so right now waste to energy has become a big thing so a lot of our waste is more waste is going to incineration to produce electricity so the calories from things like plastic are being used in interest so those things are not so easily recycled and those lower value plastics are going straight to incineration to produce electricity for home and of course theres technologies such as Anaerobic Digestion that produced by a gas to to reprocess waste food are also becoming popular in a rise in in importance in the u. K. So on i mean i ask you there a little more about this idea of burning the waste because there are Health Concerns about that and in terms of the toxicity of the gases that come out the emissions that we see from it and i mean some argue greenpeace for one that its really just kicking the can down the road and that also basically building incinerators creates a market for Single Use Plastics which is surely goes against the whole point of it. Of course this is this is the counter arguments is a very valid point here that is they argument that the plastics are replacing fossil fuels but actually if those plastics were we used if those plastics would not single use and if it is quite right that those days and center 8 is going to be looking for the calories so that we see can now waste with high calorie valley even high plastics so that that that is a problem and i mean an incentive right that one properly should be low in emissions and the argument is that oppose that theyll this deal the scenario of havanese plastics and the environment is down the road to Health Issues these things turned into more more micro plastics and potentially end up in the food chain because the answer to this is just dont produce a much waste and the 1st place we are where in the u. K. That we just producing too much waste and hong kong i want to ask you i see youve been listening to sharon and i came to jump in there but what is china doing differently youve talked about different Waste Management systems and what can the rest of the world learn from what china is doing yeah thats going to say share with exactly right the 10 all phases of this problem is in a recession like a nation you know is on pays its way and it isnt are either is there or built. From time to time you can hear about the protests. Of the in the as indeed it gave or here in china to so therefore the 1st thing to do with the ways is to reduce the model ways to do a regime every day at all levels then you know from there we go from reduced to reuse to recycle and city and that is about 10 years ago that made that legislation about the circuit or promoting for the. The circuit or tommy. Is taking this very seriously as i mentioned the. Financing investment lending it businesses in this area ready is really booming so these becoming. Industry for the circuit or economy i think. There are going to do about 20 a lot of Industrial Parks are now. Redesigning and. Just putting together these waste and Waste Management and by certain Certain Companies they know thats one thing i also mention this the socalled of the year old ways to movement ready toward 0 basis strategies and the happening and other 2 dozens of cities and these cities are now doing the pilot to theyre trying to do the experiment theyre trying to come up with some good parent is is in the policy and i can be scaled up by the National Level so so that this year i think it just was starting this whole. Hang in dealing with the waste here are not i want to ask you as well just coming off what professor achieve is saying that this whole idea about 0 waste weve seen various different developing countries especially some in africa actually i believe now fast before african countries have banned plastic bags tanzania was the last one in may if the wilds poorest region can do that. Whats stopping the developed wild from doing the same. I think its directly linked to our lifestyles if we are not if we are not used to going to a shopping market shopping market and picking up a piece of fruit and putting it in a bag rather than wrapping invent plastic and then wing it and then leaving we would just not know that there is an alternative way of going about this which is why i fully agree with professor true that its its not just reduce reuse and recycle i would add one more level to this which is reduce reuse recycle lifecycle. Unless we see from where something is coming and where it will end up and how we get back to the source and keep reducing it several times over were even there even the recycling operations will fall short otherwise all the amount to waste will keep generate. The resource footprint of the United States for instance is. India even with one 4th the number of people so if you dont change your lifestyle if you dont look at the life cycle of every product that you are using you are going to be in this problem. So we have to of course create an economic case for a circular economy and that china is demonstrating it indias leading Government Agency from a that advises the government the mediocre has also proposed to build up a major push for circular economy but all of this comes after we change the lifestyles and in the 1st place and date and try to find a political well to encourage people to do so huge challenges and its all about awareness i guess going ahead and watching the developing world actually take the lead for a change well thank you to all our guests are not Sharon George and professor cheney and hong kong and thank you for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website aljazeera dot com and for further discussion do go to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com for trash a. J. Inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a. J. Inside story from aina started han the whole team hands by fast. 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