Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Kathmandu to Thrashmandu !!

They don't call it Trashmandu for nothing. In Nepal's capital city of Kathmandu, garbage is pretty much everywhere. It's stuffed in plastic bags and dropped in drainage ditches. It's piled high in empty lots, on the roadside and on the edges of the city's sewage-filled rivers. It is thrown out of bus windows and off rooftops into neighbors' yards. It's hard to believe Kathmandu could get any worse. But this month, it did.


The piles of trash that are smothering Kathmandu are a reminder that the world itself is drowning in garbage. A World Bank report puts daily garbage generation at 3.5 million tons, expected to hit 6 million tons by 2025. And governments aren't always willing to pick up the trash. Nepal's government, for example, has shown little commitment to the disposal of the valley's garbage despite passing a Solid Waste Management Act in 2011. The government is trying to prepare a new landfill site, but a road needs to be built and a river needs to be diverted. That will take at least another three years.

Read more @ NPR

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