The garbage is piling up in New Delhi, India, because the city doesn’t have an adequate waste management system in place to handle the 8,800 tons of trash produced each day by its 13 million residents. The city manages to clear only 5,400 tons a day, and dumps most of the trash into open landfills, despite a court order to do otherwise. The landfills are breeding grounds for tuberculosis, cholera, and malaria, yet thousands of children search through them each day for items to sell to scrap dealers. Critics say the city should develop policies to encourage waste reduction. Authorities have just begun to experiment with fines to prevent littering.
