Hyderabad

Here to the northwest lies the rubbish of the eight million people of the Indian city. Every day the smoking mountain grows by 4,000 tonnes or approximately 1.5 million tonnes of waste per year. At one time, 15 years ago before the huge landfill, the area with its little lake was a popular destination of the city people. Today, the groundwater is contaminated, the lake is biologically dead, and the villages are dying. Anyone who could afford it moved away long ago. The families who stayed are fighting for their survival. The men of the villages can no longer find wives. By tradition, wives move into the homes and to the family of the husband. But what family wants their daughter to move to a village at the foot of a smoking mountain of rubbish?

One and a half million tonnes of rubbish per year is an unimaginably large amount. However, a comparison with Hamburg helps bring the figure into perspective. The households of the Hanseatic city produce about 815,000 tonnes of rubbish per year – about half as much as the households of Hyderabad. Yet four times as many people live in the Indian megacity than in Hamburg.

The fact that Hamburg nonetheless seems clean and tidy and Hyderabad in many places seems dirty and dusty is because of the system: by the time the waste in Hyderabad finally reaches the landfill it has a long journey behind it. 20,000 men and women with 970 refuse collection vehicles battle the waste daily in the metropolis. Unlike Hamburg, the rubbish is not already sorted by the households, disposed of in small rubbish bins put outside the front door and then picked up directly by the municipal sanitation department with collection vehicles. Every day in Hyderabad about 5,000 small businesses collect the waste at the front door using tricycle carts. They work on their own account and are paid directly by the households. The city provides the rubbish tricycles. A rubbish cyclist is paid the equivalent of up to 80 eurocents per month and household for his work. The small waste firms sort the rubbish, sell paper, plastic, and glass, and take the rest to large waste containers that are set up all over the city. There are 3,800 of them, but 8,000 would be necessary to really keep Hyderabad’s streets clean. Yet every time the city attempts to set up a new huge collected waste container, the residents rebel. No one wants the stinking monsters near their front door. The ones that are set up are filled to overflowing. In some places a full container is standing in a knee-high mound of waste. The wind and stray dogs do the rest.

Recently, a private firm bought the smoking mountain of rubbish on the outskirts of Hyderabad from the city. The Indian Ramky Group wants to turn the area back into a popular outing destination, naturally while raking in a profit from the waste. “This is the raw material of the future,” says Ramky consultant Christopher Stapelton, an Australian who has been in Hyderabad for three months now to supervise the transformation of the burning hill into a modern waste recycling plant. “The fact that the hill is burning proves that it is full of energy,” says Stapelton. Ramky not only plans to profit from the raw materials in the waste, but also to produce electrical power for the megacity with new waste incineration plants. “Since the people here take everything valuable from the rubbish, India already has one of the highest recycling rates in the world,” says Stapelton pointing to the huge hill. “Most of what’s left is organic.” Yet the residents even attempt to get as much as possible out of the waste here. They are the ones who keep setting the huge hill on fire. They mainly search for metals in the ashes; a perilous task. Last week part of the huge mound of waste slid down and three women perished under the rubbish avalanche. Their bodies have not yet been found.

Ramky has now begun fencing in the huge area. The corporation wants no more deaths and no treasure hunters on its mountain of raw materials. “We want the people to work for us. Under safe conditions.” says Stapelton. In spite of initial conflicts, the company has now employed a number of residents. Within six months, Ramky built an asphalt road on the top of the hill, rubbish-sorting plants, office buildings, parks, and a village school. Work is still being done on more incineration and sorting plants as well as on generator buildings. “We want to make this a modern showcase for all developing countries,” says Stapelton. “Why should they make the same mistakes as the western countries already have with their rubbish?” Ramky plans to revegetate the big mountain of rubbish bit by bit and purify the groundwater with modern engineering. “In five years this will be a place people like to visit again,” says Stapelton. The villagers at the foot of the hill are still sceptical. “They built the road and the wall, but we’re still getting sick from the poisonous air,” says a woman shaking her head. On the other side of the dusty village road stands a man in the smouldering ashes and searches for aluminium scraps.