Solid Waste Management: Socio-Cultural and

Solid Waste Management: Socio-
Cultural and Psychological Issues

“Although we will probably never be able to recycle all wastes…But even with today’s technology there are large volumes of waste that can’t be economically converted or that are essentially indestructible, hence we still have waste disposal problems.” -Edward A. Keller, Environmental Geologist.

In all the pre-Industrial societies land based production was the prime mode of livelihood and chief mainstay of the economy. There was a happy balance between the productive activities and consumption pattern of demography leaving no room for any sort of the non-manageable wastes either degradable or non-degradable. Parallel to the geological and biological evolution socio-cultural evolution also took place. It was Arnold Toynbee who first coined the term ‘Industrial revolution’. After Industrial revolution the entire productive system transformed radically and thus huge problems like over-production, various forms of pollution, industrial wastes etc emerged and later on became the most problematized area of concern for the humanity in general and scientific community in particular. The growing imbalance between the ‘Need and Greed’ accelerated the pace of problems like solid waste management. The revolution in automobile industries and in cutting-edge technology which is firmly based on ‘use and throw’ formula followed by market-consumerism became the chief cause for all these problems.

The present paper brings into focus the core issues that give birth to such problems which consist of socio-cultural values, norms and growing market-consumerism. Actually every discipline and subject has one common and universal destination that is to serve the humanity through welfare measures and make people aware of emerging dangers and challenges. 

Let me make a modest attempt to highlight four significant issues: (1) Sociological factors-disintegration of joint family, nuclear  family, urban immigration etc. (2) Psychological issues – need, greed, accumulation tendency, egotist attitude and status consciousness (3) Cultural practices and religio-spiritual belief and values (4) Globalization and its impact on consumerism.

Most of the super-developed nations like U.S.A., the Great Britain, France, are facing social crisis after attaining logical culmination of their economic development. In our country although there is no social crisis as such but impact of globalization is clearly visible in the so called traditional, immobile and caste-based society. The age-old social institutions are breaking and new social order is gradually taking shape. There was a time when a television/refrigerator used to serve the purpose of the whole family. Now the situation has altered. The mushrooming of nuclear families particularly in urban areas has massively and urgently demanded those goods of common use as well as of luxury items. This has directly contributed to solid wastes in the form of television sets, fridges, coolers, air-conditioners etc. When television was a new phenomenon in rural heartland of India, it was instrumental in binding together the community as a whole. The whole community used to enjoy their popular serials/programs on single screen but these days even slum-dwellers have possessed almost all the luxury items of entertainment and recreation like radio transistors, televisions, tape recorders etc consequently increasing the quantity of solid wastes. Added to it there is the state of the human mind. In this age of post-modernism every individual has artificially developed a desire for possessing all those things that are widely used by the upper strata of society. This is a different form of what M. N. Srinivas calls ‘sanskritization’. Even a low paid individual irrespective of his needs, tries to possess every thing which he cannot afford. The moment one reaches in the category of the affordable class, one has in one’s mind a desire to acquire the same status symbols in the form of vehicles, luxury items etc. This trend is deleteriously contributing its share of solid waste. The rapidly changing economic status of the individual has accelerated the growth of solid wastes.

In the West where there is greater mobility of jobs/occupations the problem of transportation of house hold utensils is a big problem. In U.S.A. a white collared job professional hardly carries all of his household goods along with him in case he is transferred to a far off destination owing to the burden of transportation cost. They simply leave or dump all those objects near the highways illegally.

Thus there is accumulation of the unused and superfluous material. Generally scientists and technocrats are keenly interested in culling data on solid waste and search for its recycling mechanism. A noted environmental Geologist, Edward A. Keller subscribers to this view. One view of waste disposal is to consider the ultimate technology to be a system capable of accepting an unlimited amount of waste and safely keeping it forever outside the human sphere of life. In the first century of the industrial revolution, the volume of waste produced was relatively small and the concept of “dilute and disperse” was adequate. Factories were located near rivers because the water provided easy transport of materials by boat, the facility of communication and easy disposal of waste into the river. But even with today’s technology there are large volumes of waste that cannot economically be converted or that are essentially indestructible. Hence we still have waste disposal problems. Disposal of solid wastes by state and municipal agencies costs billions of dollars every year. It is one of the Government’s most expensive environmental problems, accounting for about 55% of total environmental expenditure.

Urban sociologists clearly opined that all societies produce waste, but industrialization and urbanization have caused an ever-increasing accumulation of wastes and have greatly compounded the problem of waste management. Edward A. Keller too supports the opinion of social demographers and accepts that the disposal of solid waste is primarily an urban problem. In U.S.A. alone, urban areas produce about 640 million kgs of solid waste each day. That amount of waste is sufficient to cover more than 1.6 square kms of land every day to a depth of 3 meters. 

Urbanization is not an isolated event but more complex process involving various socio-cultural issues. In post-independence era India has witnessed unprecedented growth of urban centers and small towns. The growing opportunities of jobs and employment in numerous sectors, the manufacturing and building activities have made towns the epicenter of human habitation.  With increasing pressure of population for shelter and haven, apartments, multi-storey buildings, multiplexes, mega-malls are mushrooming in urban centers. With economic growth, the purchasing power of the people increases leading to higher consumption of resources. While the urban population is smaller than the rural, it corners more resources. This is starkly evident in big cities. City-dwellers consume more resources per capita and generate more wastes. Today many of these wastes are a menace to the society.

Loss of cultural heritage is one of the prime reasons for solid wastes. We are quite familiar with the news of transforming old and antique monuments, buildings, palaces, forts into luxury hotels and resorts. In urban scenario, the elite class has developed the tendency of modification, renovation and periodic repairing of their houses. The debris extracted from these activities increases the quantum of solid wastes to a great extent.

One of the biggest causative factors of solid wastes accumulation is revolution in automobile industries which has played a pivotal role in easy and fast communutation of masses. Later on with boom in this automobile sector it became a fashion and symbol of social elitism to possess costliest big cars in a country like India. This type of psyche has converted the houses and bungalows of the affluent class/society into a garage. A case in point is of Ashok Malhotra, a canteen contractor of Delhi, who was in the news for possessing 52 cars in a range of 7 lakhs upto 35 lakhs. Two decades earlier Rajnish who later got popularity as Osho had in his possession 90 Rolls Royces. He had the dream to possess 365 Rolls Royce cars for use one each a day. The same story but with a different spirit is that of the Maharaja of Jaipur who once visited the London based workshop of Rolls Royce with his wife. But the couple was not given due respect and honor which they expected. Just after their return from their overseas trip the extravagant couple bought 3 Rolls Royces and utilized these for carrying house hold dirt, cow dung, and other wastes! Coincidentally the Chief Executive Officer of that brand visited the palace of Maharaja and was astonished to see 3 Rolls Royces of his company being used in that fashion. We have numerous references and proofs of this type of elitist, aristocratic and possessive attitude of the individual.

Lastly, this generation continues to increase solid waste world-wide in both absolute and per capita terms. Wealth is a primary determinant of the quantity and the composition of solid wastes a city produces. The real solution lies only in changing the insecure mindset of the people who have developed tremendous zeal for accumulating unwanted things irrespective of their need and affordability.