A mountain of waste

Nuwakot,Nepal

If the stench of the occasional pile of trash on the roads of Kathmandu is too much for you, try standing on an entire hill made of garbage! Thirty km away from Kathmandu, in the lap of Nuwakot’s lush green hills, sits the aforementioned hillock—a landfill site called Aletar. Run by the Ministry of Local Development and managed by the Kathmandu Metropolitan City office, this is the site where all the trash collected from the districts of Lalitpur and Kathmandu is dumped. Massive trucks rumble to and fro, each incoming one carrying anywhere from four to eight tonnes of garbage. Vultures encircle the skies, below which people pick at the mound of garbage, scavenging for reusable and recyclable materials. The garbage pile itself is quite a sight to see: never before has ‘eclectic’ had such a terrible visual effect. But at the same time, it is wondrous to see how many different sources of garbage wind up at this common destination. A film reel runs from the top to the bottom, which on close inspection, is revealed to be of the Bollywood film Om Shanti Om. A little distance away is a patch of empty medicine packets. The most common sight, though, is the unmistakable black polythene bags.

“Polythene is the worst. It makes up most of the volume of trash,” says Hari Sharan Phuyal, who has been overseeing landfill sites for 30 years. “Polythene bags cost Rs. 1. Shopkeepers and consumers throw them away like they cost nothing—but they have no idea how much 50 plastic bags cost the environment.” Indeed, the inability of such plastic to be recycled or degraded makes them a primal component of this mountain of trash. There remains no other solution than to push it under the carpet.

Nepal commits to doubling tiger number by 2022

KATHMANDU,NEPAL

Nepal has expressed a strong commitment to doubling its tiger population by 2022. Minister for Forest and Soil Conservation Deepak Bohara on Sunday made this vow while addressing the inaugural session of the International Tiger Conservation Conference that began at St. Petersburg in Russia.

Bohara stressed that Nepal had been successful to accomplish most of the commitments made at the Kathmandu Global Tiger Workshop 2009 in the context of the Global Tiger Initiative mission and the goal of doubling tiger population.

The international forum has brought together the leaders of 13 Tiger Range Countries to discuss what could be the best and last chance to save the wild tiger. The summit featured high-level officials and tiger experts from every major tiger country and conservation institutions, a first in the history of tiger conservation.

The conference is being organized to have a joint commitment to save the big cat after a warning that without major advances, the animal will disappear within the next 20 years from the wild, their existence threatened by habitat-loss and poaching.

Plastic-free Ilam Municipality

Ilam,Nepal

After a month-long campaign and trial period, Ilam Municipality has completely banned the use of plastic bags in the city. People now take a jute bag with them from home when they go shopping. Shopkeepers use either paper or leaves to wrap goods if customers don't have their own bags.

Tea entrepreneurs have agreed to use Nepali paper to package tea. The municipality has planned to maximise the use of paper and ban plastic use, except for readymade goods like noodles and biscuits wrapped in plastic bags.

The municipality recalled polythene bags from all shops and a team led by municipality executive officer Yubaraj Dahal has been monitoring the market. If a shopkeeper sells goods in a polythene bag he will be fined Rs 500, while shoppers will be fined Rs 200 for using them.

Dahal argues that the drastic steps were necessary as plastic was littering an otherwise clean and green Ilam. The municipality has set aside 38 ropanis of land (>19,000 square metres) for processing degradable waste. "Our goal is to develop Ilam as a green city within two years by processing all the waste generated here. The Finnish ambassador has promised support, and has already visited the proposed site."

Cleaners gathering dust

Kathmandu,Nepal 

Cleaning vehicles donated by the Chinese government worth millions of rupees remain unused because of government inefficacy and tardiness. Two months after their arrival, they are still parked in the Kathmandu Metropolitan premises. The arrival of the vehicles was delayed by 10 months because of legal hassles. The Metropolitan complains that the Transport Management Department did not register the buses. The transport office, on the other hand, claims the vehicles weren't brought in for registration.

Chief of the Environment Management Department of Kathmandu Metropolitan, Rabin Man Shrestha, says that all due process had been followed, but the transport office demanded COP (Conformity of Production) documents. "The Chinese companies then sent the documents through email," Shrestha adds, "but the department is now refusing to register without paper documents."

Windfarms Moving Inland

Helsinki,Finland

Surveys have begun to find suitable sites for wind farms away from coastal areas and islands. With the fast development of the technology of wind power generation, new opportunities and new locations are opening up.

Alliances of local government that have banned together to cooperate in regional economic development are looking for sites that are not only windy enough, but also where operations will not disturb local residents and where the environment would not be unduly harmed.

Currently, the focus is on environmental factors, according to Heidi Saaristo, a landscape architect with an alliance of municipalities in the south west of the country.