Acts that appear to be small in nature or innocuous play a major role in the destruction of environment.
Using vehicles when they are not necessary, dumping wastes wherever we like, spoiling the green cover, indiscriminate sand mining are some of the acts that lead to damage of pollution, says a professor of Andhra University.
People go to the beach road or to a park on their vehicles in the morning for a walk but they are starting to pollute the atmosphere right from daybreak.
It is better to walk from the residences to the beach road or to a park to avoid pollution by vehicles and contribute that much to pollution control, said professor of geology N. Subba Rao on the occasion of Earth Day on Sunday. Waste is dumped everywhere, into the air in the form of gases, and liquid and solid waste into water and on land.
Every day one lakh tonnes of solid waste is produced in India and in Visakhapatnam the solid waste generation per head is around 400 grams, the domestic household waste taking 65 per cent of it.
Recycling waste
Dumping of wastes spoils the scenic resources, pollutes the natural resources (air, soil and water), and damages the health conditions and hence the irresponsible acts must be stopped, he said.
The dumping yard must be 25 km away from the city and at a distance of at least 500 m from a water body, habitation, vegetation, and a road, and also not upstream of a river.
Recycling of wastes is an important way to keep the earth clean since less quantity of raw material is used, less environmental damage that is caused by waste treatment and disposal, saves money, reduces less quantity of power for producing new products, keeps the surroundings clean and healthy and prevents creation of waste at source. Compost can be made out of food and plant waste which has many benefits like making the soil easy to cultivate, retains nutrients in the soil, etc. This is also a type of organic manure.
Though Visakhapatnam has the advantage of hills on three sides, which due to the hill morphology would cause good rainfall, there is a danger of human activity damaging the hill morphology. Sand mining in rivers would put rivers under pressure. Maintaining river sand layer is important in controlling floods and avoiding droughts since sand layers absorb water, Prof. Subba Rao said.
