When I first read of the Margao-Curtorim Sonssdo (Garbage Dump) fire, my knee jerk reaction was to mentally curse the usual suspects - the Goa politicians and bureaucrats.
I tried to connect that with the recent media-grabbing headlines of Philippines asking Canada to take it’s garbage back, and now Malaysia doing the same with Australian garbage. This was all a puzzle. Until I came across this video on You Tube that shows the developing countries are too lazy to build infrastructure to get rid of their own garbage, it being easier for them to sell it to developing countries. It was all the more shocking to me as a conscientious citizen diligently making daily decisions to separate my household garbage into the 1)Biodegradeable 2) General Garbage and 3) Recyclable bins. In practice all of it is being sold to landfills and garbage plants in South-East Asia and India. Where it ends up being processed into plastic pellets through a dirty process that involves dangerous chemicals that are afterwards spewed into canals and rivers from which local people drink and use water and catch poisoned fish that they ingest. I am sorry, like the CBS Australian investigator, that my garbage is going to ultimately poison innocent people in other lands in various ways, not excluding fires in dumps that rage for days together and cause all sorts of diseases to people whose houses and facilities have been allowed to come up near such dumps. Exposing Australia’s recycling lie | 60 Minutes Australia https://youtu.be/lqrlEsPoyJk Roland Toronto.
