***A few developing countries have regulations to control the output of hazardous waste and even fewer have the technology or trained personnel to dispose of it. Many African and Asian countries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma continue to build plants without including costly waste disposal system. In many cases, plants have disposal systems that remain inoperative due to inappropriate technology. Reports have it that in Lagos of Nigeria, five incinerators built remain idle because they can treat garbage containing less than 20 per cent water.***

I N 1986. Pelicano set off from Philadelphia with 14.000 tonnes of toxic ashes. The ship sailed around the world for more than two years seeking a port that would accept its cargo. In 1989. it dumped 4.000 tonnes of the unwanted cargo offshore Haiti and then slipped back to the deep sea A month later, the ship's captain said that he had unloaded the ash in a country he chose not to name.

A poignant example of environmental exploitation of the poor countries by the rich ones, indeed.

Indiscriminate dumping of toxic ashes in places far away from the manufacturing country underscores a global dilemma and pinpoints the necessity of reducing by-products of civilisation without endangering human health or damaging the environment. Not a single country’, which has not thought of proper and safe disposal of its industrial wastes, has been spared of the scourge. Say for example. Hong Kong with its 5.7 million people and about 50.000 factories within 400 square miles dumps 1000 tonnes of plastic a day - triple the amount thrown in London.

In Dhaka and Chittagong, the situation will assume equally hazardous. In the capital city alone much of the 10.000 tonnes of garbage including solid wastes and toxic and substances like used injection syringes, hazardous plastics. metals and batteries is not picked up from dustbins, streets and household corners, and find their way into landfills and open sewers. The river Buriganga in Dhaka and the Karnaphuli in Chittagong have almost turned reddish as stinking soup of chemical waste and excreta continue to contaminate its waters. On the other hand, when garbage is burned, it spews dangerous gases into the air. Dumped garbage and industrial waste can turn lethal when corrosive acids, long-lived organic materials and discarded metals leach out of landfills into ground water supplies, contaminating drinking water and polluting farmlands.

Topping the list of offenders is the United States with its affluence and industrial might Reports have it that 276 million Americans in the US throw away 16 billion disposable diapers. 1.6 billion razors and blades, and 220 million tires other than glasses and bottles every year. They discard enough aluminium to rebuild the entire US commercial airline fleet every’ three months. Reports have it that they produced about 195 billion kilograms of garbage of all varieties in 1997. Other than this, each year American industries belch, pump and dump more than 1.1 billion kilograms of really nasty stuff like lead compounds, chromium, ammonia, organic solvents into the air. water and ground.

Awfully, the country is struggling to clean up the mess created by such Indiscriminate dumping of toxic waste. The problem of handling these wastes has posed a serious problem for many countries. In many countries acres of landfills of liquid waste have been created. But a few nations have been able to formulate adequate strategies to control the volume of waste produced. Moreover, effective waste disposal efforts prove to be quite expensive and each method has its own drawbacks. Incinerators also prove to be burdensome investments for many countries, entailing serious limitations. Contaminant laden ash residue itself requires a dumpsite. Ou the other hand, growing consumer demands for more throwaway packaging add to the volume.

Besides a lew developing Countries have legulafions to control the output of hazardous waste and even fewer have the u < hnology or trained personnel to dispose of it. Many African and Asian countries, including India. Pakistan. Bangladesh. Sri Lanka and Burma continue to build plants without Including costly waste disposal system. In many cases plants have disposal systems that remain Inoperative due to Inappropriate technology. Reports have it that In Lagos of Nigeria, five incinerators built remain idle because they can treat garbage containing less than 20 per cent water. But most ol the city's garbage In these countries is 30 per cent to 40 per cent liquids. Even in the highly Industrialised countries, there are formidable social obstacles to waste management Nobody wants Incineration or disposal system In his localities now. In

the US. 80 per cent of the solid waste that are now dumped In about 6000 land fills are going to be filled up and have to be shut. We have a real capacity crunch", said a senior official of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Even In West Germany, about 50.000 landfills have been declared potentially dangerous because they may threaten vital ground water supplies.

The other most common enemy of human being and its environment is the chemical chlorine, especially in our country where environmental protection against it is hardly available. Chlorine is used in the production of the paper we use. the slippers we wear and the DDT we spray on mosquitoes. So said a chemist. "God created 91 elements, man a little more than a dozen and the devil one - chlorine." It is produced by man and reacts with carbon to create a new range of stable and highly toxic compounds called organochlo-rines. Ominously, industries using chlorine are spreading through the length and breadth of the country with little protection to ward off its harmful effects. Chlorine is also used to bleach wood pulp to make paper and viscose rayon. Chlorine as the main ingredient of plastic and PVC is used to make everything from petrochemicals to pipes to slippers. Organochlo-rines are damaging because they travel through the food chains gradually increasing in concentration. Some affect the liver and kidney, cause cancer and could interfere with processes like brain chemistry, spleen and bone structure and even hormonal system. The pulp and paper industry has failed to come up with chlorine reducing technologies. The PVC (polyvinyl chloride) industry deals with the crisis by recy-< ling But that only converts plastic into other plastics. The country's future looks grim in such a situation, fraught with dangerous consequences as well as diseases that we ourselves are producing.

The question that looms up in public mind is how to prevent our environment wallowing in waste and poisonous materials

that we ourselves are producing. Higher fines, taxes and strict enforcement might force the manufacturing Industries to curb waste and toxic materials. Some manufacturing companies in the West has cut waste generation in half by using fewer toxic chemicals, separating out wastes that can be reused and substituting alternative raw materials for hazardous substances. To cite an instance, in the Netherlands. Duphar. a large chemical concern, adopted a new manufacturing process that decreased by 95 per cent the amount of waste created in making a pesticide.

Recycling is. of course, the best way to reduce waste, Japan now recycles more than 50 per cent of its trash and Western Europe around 30 per cent. Shockingly, the US. the largest producer of waste and toxic materials till now recycles about 10 per cent of its garbage or 16 million tonnes a year and as reports are available, only 10 states have mandatory recycling laws. But as experts point out. even with most efficient recycling. there will still be refuse. Landfills and incinerators. even if these are spewing harmful emissions, will be needed for a well-managed waste disposal systems for the foreseeable future. But where possible, landfills should be fitted with impermeable clay or synthetic liners to contain toxic materials and with pumps to drain liquid waste for treatment elsewhere. Arsenic pollution in tube well water in the length and breadth of Bangladesh that recently posed a threat to the people here could only be contained by this means. Landfill waste could also be burned to generate electricity. The US uses only six per cent of its rubbish to produce energy till now and Germany figures about 30 per cent to en-ergy facilities.

There should be an international ban on the export of environmentally dangerous waste to countries without proven technology to dispose it safely. Reports have it that in the last few years, some million tonnes of hazardous waste have been transported from the US and

Western Europe on ships like Pelicano to countries of Africa. Asia and Eastern Europe. If must be brought home to the industrialised affluent countries that dumping of one country's waste to another country amounts to declaring war on the people of the country these waste are dumped. And If such wastes continue to proliferate, men will have all but declared war on the earth's environment and thus in the end. on his own richest heritage. Encouragingly. Gary Liss of Loomis. California. a Veteran of recycling and solid waste programmes says that in nature there is no such thing as waste. What dies or is discarded from one part of the ecosystem nourishes another part. Liss points out that we can get a glimpse of the less profligate future in Kalundborg. Denmark. There, an unusual place called an "eco-industrial park" shows how much can be gained by recycling and resource sharing. Within the park, a power company, a pharmaceuticals firm, a wall board producer and an oil refinery share in the production and use of steam, gas and cooling waler. Excess heat warms nearby homes and agricultural green houses

One company’s waste becomes another’s resource. The power plant, for example, sells the sulphur dioxide it scrubs from its smokestacks to the wall board company, which uses the compound as a raw material. Dozens of these eco-in-dustrlal parts are being developed all over the world.

Biotechnology is giving us additional tools to cope with waste and turn it to our advantage. We now have microbes that can take toxic substances in contaminated soil or sludge including organic solvents and industrial oils and convert them into harmless by-products genetic engineering will pave the way for such a possibility. Scientists at Monsanto and Heartland Fiber are working toward engineering corn plants with the kind of fibre content that paper companies would find attractive. So long as the genetic tinkering poses

no ecological threat, that approach could tap Into a huge stream of agricultural waste, turning some of it Into an industrial ingredient. In the consumer market, recycling has already spawned an army of alchemists. Jackets are being made from discarded plastic bottles, briefcase from worn-out tires and belts from beer bottle caps. The US has lately got serious about recycling: about 25 per cent of its 195 billion kilograms of municipal garbage are now salvaged, at least temporarily, for some sort of second life.

Recycling will gain momentum as new materials are developed that arc easier to use. For examples. Jesse Ansubel. director of the programme or the Human Environment at the Rockfeller University, predicts that architects will increasingly rely on new types of foamed glass that can be made unusually strong but still light weight. Glass is a very recyclable material made from sand and it can be crushed back essentially into sand. Ansubel thinks we could see foamed glass replace much of the concrete in today's buildings. There are limits of course, to how many lives you can give a pile of debris. In the long run. we have to reduce the amount of material we use in the first place. Some progress has already been made. Aluminium cans and plastic soda bottles have become thinner over the years. But more sweeping reductions will require a whole new kind of manufacturing process. That, says Reid Llfset. editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology. is where nanotechnology plays a role. In this emerging field that employs about every kind of scientific and engineering discipline, by building them from scratch, atom by atom, molecule by molecule. This bottom-up nanotechnological way of making things differ from the traditional drilling, sawing, etching, milling and other fabrication methods that create so much waste along the way.

Researchers have made headway toward molecule size transistors and wires and even batteries that are thousand times smaller than the smallest one we are now using. These laboratory feats have made sugar-cube size computer possible now. So says Llfset: "A lot of consumer goods and Industrial equipment could become dramatically smaller when nanotechnology comes online. That plus more efficient recovers' ol the discarded goods, ought to translate into huge reductions in waste".

But excellence in technology is not enough. Just as critical are changes in attitudes and lifestyles. Especially in our country steeped as we are in traditional values, lifestyles, attitudes, cultural pattern and taboo s we could hardly make any breakthrough till now. Brad Allenby. AT& T's vice-president for environment, safety and health, believes our move from the industrial age to the information age could help us enormously. Allenby further revealed that in 1999, 29 per cent of AT&T's management force telecommuted, meaning less reliance on cars. This entails a bigger achievement, involving enhancement in the quality of life. Significantly, this will put less value on things that use lots of materials - like three cars in the family driveway - and more on things that don't swallow up resources - like telecommuting and surfing the Internet. This might give us one particular benefit in a sense while it is true that visions of a "paperless office" have gone wildly wrong so far.

Hopefully, we still have a chance to cut consumption of paper and the trees it comes from and most notably the devil substance chlorine used to make paper. That means the world is moving towards a trend of dematerialisation. The deeper dematerialisation goes in society, the less stuff there will be to discard. Indications are there all around with notable exception of Bangladesh, that through the magic of recycling and modern alchemy, the affluent world will move swiftly toward a world without waste. Shockingly, while the rest of the world has become cleaner, we would still be drowning in trash because of the lack of vision, political Infighting and clear policy direction and lack of consensus among the political parties on vital state matters.