Waste as Public Space?

Picture this: You are driving on the roads of your city and have hilly landscapes for company everyday. Beautiful right? But what if these are not the lush green mountains you just thought about - rather, they are massive piles of filthy garbage resembling mountains. Unnerving isn’t it? Spanning 345 acres, these 300 ft high piles of waste are a result of 4 decades of indiscriminate dumping at Kodungaiyur in Chennai. Residents here are victims of respiratory issues, skin allergies, and contaminated groundwater (Shekhar, 2021). While most of the city ignores its waste management problems, areas near dumping grounds suffer the most - which is plain injustice. If this trend continues, we will undoubtedly end up in a situation like Kevin Lynch’s “waste cacotopia” (Lynch & Southworth, 1990), where many animals are extinct, humans are struggling to live and where waste is disposed to outer space.

As per data available in Greater Corporation of Chennai’s (GCC) website, the city of Chennai generates a staggering total of 5.4 million kilograms of garbage daily. 68% of this waste is generated by its residents alone. In a country where waste management is not perceived as a shared responsibility and where we have been conditioned to accept that cleanliness is only reserved for private spaces and not public spaces (Bisen, 2019), it has become a common practice to discard waste without any seconds thoughts like - What happens to my waste? Where does it go? Will this affect the environment and in turn my well being? Though the GCC lists all available waste management infrastructure in the city in its website, the exact location of these facilities, especially transfer stations, are not easily accessible. Additionally, due to insufficient maintenance, these transfer stations have become mini dump yards themselves. While the government makes multiple announcements on the adoption of different methodologies and technologies to get rid of municipal waste, the waste management debate in Chennai has not yet made a strong overlap with the fields of architecture and spatial planning.

Architecture and urban planning have the potential to act as a “device” (Nobile, 2018) to weave waste management infrastructure into the urban fabric. What if spaces of waste management can become public spaces that foster important conversations on recycling, upcycling, composting and mindful waste management amongst residents, government authorities and waste pickers alike? When waste infrastructures and its associated spaces become public spaces, they open up closed processes of waste management (Lhendup and Dorji, 2022) and expose the complexities associated with it.

The “out-of-sight-out-of-mind” attitude is making people complacent when it comes to taking action towards scientifically-sound waste management practices. Data supports the fact that people become exceedingly uncomfortable when put face to face with huge amounts of waste and start questioning their consumption levels (Eckardt et al., 2012). Re-imagining places of waste infrastructure as public spaces offers a dual advantage: it enhances public awareness and motivation for action while encouraging the maintenance of the facility.

In this regard, Chennai can take a leaf out of Copenhagen’s urban fabric. Through the CopenHill Energy Plant and Urban Recreation Centre in Copenhagen, BIG architects envision a space where public facilities and a waste to energy (WTE) plant intersect, creating a medium for retrospection and reflection. Although the usage of a WTE plant in solid waste management (SWM) process in Chennai or any Indian city - where 50% or more of waste generated is biodegradable and unsegregated - is debatable (Bhushan et al., 2018), it is the concept of community integration that is to be taken into consideration.

In a similar fashion, nestled within a man-made hill that functions as a public park with fitness tracks, the Sydhavns Recycling centre at Copenhagan performs the dual function of a public recreation space and a recycling centre where people can drop off waste. As BIG eloquently puts it,

While many garbage dumping sites around the world in Brazil, Seoul and the USA (Harnik et al., 2006) have been transformed into green spaces, this is a petition to “visibilise” the process of waste management and seamlessly amalgamate it in the quotidian lives of people in an effort to make them sensitive towards management of waste. Creating a public space that inventively integrates waste management processes and recreational/educational activities will elevate these processes as a community-oriented responsibility and encourage greater participation, thereby progressing towards harmonious coexistence with nature.

Applying this concept, a systemic strategy for the city of Chennai can be formulated: The existing transfer station sites in Chennai (as shown in Figure 1), situated at various locations at the heart of the city, have been rendered useless due to indiscriminate dumping. These sites can be upcycled into dynamic public spaces to contain waste processing units that cater to both dry waste and biodegradable waste. Reduce, reuse and recycle are the golden words when it comes to efficient municipal waste management. Being true to this theme, many studies (Srivatsava et al., 2014) show that a network of decentralised integrated solid waste management (ISWM) is best suited to simultaneously tackle dry and wet waste. Apart from dealing with day-to-day waste, this system will ensure sustainability in the municipal SWM process in the long run - which is undoubtedly the need of the hour. It is crucial that the methods adopted are sensitive to the local context as “waste is not a mathematical problem”(Eckardt et al., 2012).

For instance, consider the 2-acre transfer station site at Mylapore. Regarded as the culture centre of the city, Mylapore is famous for its places of worship and cultural centres to foster classical art and dance forms. It is also one of the city’s oldest residential areas. Apart from the general municipal solid waste generated, a lot of flower waste is also generated which is unique to this area. Therefore, in addition to a Material Recovery Facility to tackle dry waste, composting and biogas infrastructure at the site, there should be facilities to compost the flower waste. Natural dyes can be extracted from the processed waste and used in the manufacture of associated goods. A community space can further help foster public engagement with the up-cycling process and to hold educational discussions and workshops.

Another potential site is the transfer station at Athipet. Athipet lies within the industrial hub of Chennai. Hence, it can be activated to process metal, plastic, wood and industrial waste. Being a larger site of 5-acres, it will also have the ability to provide for up-cycling studios, workshop spaces, a training centre for waste pickers and recreational elements like play area and rooftop walking tracks. Similarly, other transfer station sites located at Saidapet, Pulinathope and T.Nagar can be activated by being sensitive to the type of waste generated in their locality. Conversely, the landfill sites at Kodungaiyur and Perungudi are inherently wetlands (Khan, 2020). The most ecologically conscious course of action would involve remediation of legacy waste through the process of bio-mining. Following this, it is imperative that these locales are maintained as sanctuaries of biodiversity.

As architects and urban planners, the objective at hand is to up-cycle the waste management site’s identity from an unpleasant eye-sore to a vibrant public space; concurrently up-cycling the collective consciousness of the public. This attempt to reinvent the system is the first step towards counteracting the negative perception of waste, bringing in meaningful public participation in Chennai while simultaneously giving the city its much needed quota of public space. The amalgamation of waste infrastructure and public space ought to serve as a catalyst, galvanising all relevant stakeholders to collaborate to address one of the most pressing urban challenges of our time.

Finally, picture this: People of all age groups actively engaging in good waste management practices through the help of the above envisioned public spaces. Do you see a cleaner, greener Chennai city in the background?