Hazards of old mobile handsets under the spotlight at United Nations meet NUSA DUA: The disposal oi massive numbers of unwanted mobile phones will be a key focus of a five-day meeting on waste management which started on Monday here in Indonesia. The fate of the more than three billion of the gadgets in use today will be discussed by more than 1,000 delegates from 170 countries at the meeting on the Basel Convention in Bali.

With the High Court getting tough on local bodies to maintain proper collection and disposal of garbage, several panchayats in Tiswadi taluka have begun the process of identifying disposal sites. According to reports, several panchayats in the taluka have started identifying the disposal sites to avoid fine of Rs 1,000 per day, which the High Court directed the government officials to impose on the local bodies.

District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil has said that from now on the city effluent and waste will not be disposed of into the Phulelli canal

While municipal councils have foiled several attempts of the High Court to get them to attend to the garbage problem in their respective jurisdictions in the last two years, the High Court on Wednesday contemplated imposing fine on defaulting civic bodies would work as deterrent.

The proposed garbage depot on 57 acres of forest land at Punawale, which is facing severe opposition from all quarters, has put the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) in a tight spot. As political parties are up in arms against the depot coming up near the Mumbai-Pune highway, there are a list of 14 conditions whose compliance is being sought by the forest department.

City incinerates 1 tonne bio-medical waste a day Nearly one tonne of bio-medical waste is generated and disposed of in Pune each day. While the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has outsourced the activity to a private firm Sun Enviro Limited to collect the waste and dispose it at the incineration facility at Kailash crematorium, efforts are now underway to woo over 6,000 small dispensaries to join the scheme. According to Piyush Solanki, assistant general manager of Sun Enviro, "so far, only 250 dispensaries and clinics have been registered.'

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has failed to curb the practice of dumping garbage in open drains by slum dwellers. With monsoon fast approaching, clogged drains are sure to create havoc once it starts raining. Officials fear that unless the slum dwellers stop dumping garbage, the city may witness severe flooding in several areas. After a lot of hue and cry, the civic body has now decided to supply tricycles in every slum where the major drains are situated for door-to-door collection of garbage.

Kathmandu appears all set to reel under the perennial garbage problem for some time more as the Sisdole locals near the Okharpauwa Landfill Site in Nuwakot continue to obstruct garbage trucks of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) from dumping the city's wastage there. Due to the obstruction from last Friday, heaps of garbage has started to literally cover the pavements, causing serious eyesore to the city's residents and possible health hazards. Kathmanduites are already thronging to the hospital with diarrhea, jaundice, typhoid and other complaints.

Residents of Okharpauwa in Nuwakot district Sunday obstructed dumping of garbage at the landfill site in the west-north of the capital. The locals picketed around 18 trucks heading from the capital carrying waste at Kauti VDC, Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) said. KMC began to pick up the wastes--accumulated for the last one week--from today after the heaps of garbage started to give off awful smell in the city. KMC Chief Dinesh Thapaliya said that the garbage dumping was obstructed by different people with various demands.

If the avowed objective of the proposal to cap the Sonsodo garbage dumpyard with tarpaulin was to arrest seepage of rain water into the waste, tonnes of waste continues to be exposed to rains at the site till date. For, the Margao Civic body is still in the process of opening up the tender and issuing work orders to cap the waste with tarpaulin sheets, notwithstanding that the 35,000 tonnes of waste is already soaked with rain water. It is learnt that the delay was caused due to lack of interest shown by JCB machine operators by staying away from the tender.