Awash in Trash—Page 2

If tackling waste management is a headache for governments, it is a Sisyphean impossibility for the region's under-resourced environmentalists. "Giving up should be the furthest thing from our minds," says Von Hernandez, head of the Philippine Clean Air Coalition. But important legislative victories tend to be stymied by feeble execution, a lack of resources or the meddling of vested interests. Hernandez's campaigning led to the passing of the 1999 Philippine Clean Air Act, which officially made the country the first in the world to ban the use of incinerators in waste disposal. But in reality the legislation is a farce. A powerful lobby of congressmen, local officials and incinerator operators is working to have it repealed—and, says Hernandez, no money has ever been allocated for the act's enforcement.

The statistics from China are the most daunting of all. The world's most populous nation produces 150 million tons of trash annually, with the volume of garbage from its cities surging by almost 9% a year since 1979—and by almost 20% in a metropolis like Beijing. Today, most of the Chinese capital's refuse—4.95 million tons a year—is sent straight to the city's 490 landfills. Of these, 231 were recently found to pose a medium- to high-level health risk to surrounding areas, triggering increased rates of cancers and respiratory illnesses. "The smell was so bad that we puked all the time when the [landfill] first moved here," says Li Xiuying, 62, of the Asuwei landfill that opened 60 km north of Beijing in 1994. "No matter how warm the weather is, we dare not open any windows," adds her neighbor Wang Yucang. Both of them say that some elderly people in Asuwei village have breathing difficulties. The situation is mirrored all over the country as unprecedented levels of construction, factory production and consumption take their toll. Around 65% of Chinese cities are ringed by landfills.

In this developmental epoch of Asian history, commercial expedience and opportunism have tended to trump everything else. So it's fitting, perhaps, that the exploitation of waste for profit is one of the few shoots of hope pushing up from the compost. Waste-management firms like Singapore's SembEnviro and India's Ramky Group are generating healthy income from refuse-disposal contracts and waste-to-energy schemes across Asia. Ramky has watched its revenues rocket from a mere $130,000 in 1994, its first year of operation, to nearly $130 million in 2005. But unless this kind of profit potential is coupled with the political will to draw up waste-management legislation where none exists—and enforce it where it does—Asia's trash will continue killing people and destroying communities. Literally. In 2005, mountains of refuse at the Cimahi city dump, just outside Jakarta, collapsed onto nearby residents, killing 141. And in 2002, the Angke River was so choked with rubbish that it broke its banks, sweeping away shacks and shantytowns and leaving thousands homeless.

The forces arrayed against this deluge are hopelessly outmatched. Out in the Angke estuary, two solitary rangers are defending the integrity of 25 hectares of swamps and mangroves known as the Muara Angke Wildlife Reserve. Wawan is just 18 years old, but the ranger's life has already made him a cynic. "Officials only come here once a year," he says. "They only come when it is time for the annual Clean City awards." The reality that he lives with the rest of the year is that the reserve is suffocating under the black sludge that seeps in freely from the Angke. The buildup of fresh water—unable to find a path to the sea that has not been blocked by waste—kills off the mangroves by affecting the salinity levels on which the trees depend. Yet Wawan maintains his thankless, lonely guard—a young David braced before the Goliath of Jakarta's trash. Only this time, nobody's expecting a miracle.

With reporting by Kay Johnson/Hanoi, Nelly Sindayen/Manila, Jason Tedjasukmana/Jakarta and Jodi Xu/Beijing

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