From Tehran to New York, Amsterdam, Shanghai and Lagos: Mountains of Trash Drowning The World
Health and Science Blog, Kodoom.com Editorial:
It appears that global warming is not the only unintended consequence of global emphasis on GDP growth through consumerism. Mountains of trash are now drowning major cities in the world so "trash" may now be the main enemy to both Iranians and Americans! In Tehran, some 9000 tons of trash mountains are now springing up every day in the Arad Kooh collection facility alone (News and video link) causing widespread stench and underground water contamination. Separately, in the forests of Saravan in the green province of Gilan, runoff from garbage landfills are now a serious threat to farming soil and water. Across the world, in New York, barges transport as much as 3,600 tons of waste down the Hudson River every day. In the Netherlands, which has a sophisticated recycling system, residents throw away the equivalent of more than 400,000 loaves of bread per day. In Jakarta, residents refer to the Indonesian city's growing dump simply as "the Mountain." And in Lebanon, landfills and dumpsites - many infamously known as “garbage mountains” - have mushroomed across Lebanon since the 1990s. The trash crisis of 2015 sparked a protest movement. It became a glaring symbol of a sectarian power system unable to meet basic needs like electricity and water.
Each year, Homo Sapiens (humans) generate 1.3 billion tons of waste. That’s expected to soar to 4 billion tons by 2100, according to Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, senior director for the World Bank's Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice. But public waste systems in cities cannot keep pace with urban expansion. The United States, China, Brazil, Japan and Germany are the leading trash generators. The U.S. produced about 228 million tons of waste in 2006, a figure that climbed to 254 tons by 2013. Unlike most utilities, such as gas, water and electricity, that are charged depending on how much is used, it works differently for waste. Because most cities and towns charge a flat fee for trash service or include it within the property tax, most Americans pay little attention to the amount of waste they are discarding. In the U.S., about $200 billion a year is spent on solid waste management and lost energy resources from disposing trash.
The world's garbage crisis — documented over two years by photographer Kadir van Lohuizen — is predicted to grow exponentially in the coming decades as people become richer and increasingly move to urban areas. By 2025, according to a World Bank study, the waste produced by cities around the globe will be enough to fill a line of rubbish trucks 3,100 miles long every day.
Trash also causes a financial burden. Cities in developing countries spend 20% to 50% of their budgets dealing with waste management, a hardship for cash-strapped nations. At the same time, poor people who forage through the dumps expose themselves to hazards such as lead and mercury and infectious agents.
The tsunami of waste that is sinking countries in southeast Asia is now a comparatively well-known problem. For a while, Asian countries seemed powerless to end the trade, but a few days ago, the Philippines and Malaysia made a stand, and sent a few small shipments of this problematic material back to Canada, its country of origin. China is also sick of being the world's recycling bin, and by 2020, the country wants no more foreign waste. In a recent push to fight local pollution, the Chinese government has enforced a new policy that bans the import of 24 types of solid waste, including most forms of paper and plastic.
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