Zero Waste Interview Series - Ravi Agarwal

An interview with Ravi Agarwal, director of the New Delhi-based organisation Toxics Link, for an upcoming documentary on waste. Some excerpts:

"Today we are using a lot of new materials that we weren't using thirty or forty years back -- a lot of new kinds of plastics, new kinds of chemicals, new kinds of products are coming into place....We're using so many kinds of plastic packaging, and people are also using more packaged food. All this is creating a kind of waste which is very toxic, and we have no mechanism to deal with it. [Exposure to these toxics] have various kinds of long-term chronic effects, which includes cancer...endocrine disruption -- that means your hormone system gets disrupted; if you're a growing child then you don't grow properly; you have reproductive failures later in life. Also you have genetic issues -- now we are finding that some of these chemicals can have impacts at the gene level."

"Also some tests have been done on what they call 'body burdens', and we find that each of our bodies is a repository for thousands of chemicals which were not there earlier....our ancestors did not have these chemicals in their bodies...So we've become like a toxic landfill in a sense, the repository of all the chemicals in the world. And the fear is that it not only impacts our lives, but it impacts our children's lives, and their children's lives."

"When you dispose of waste in a landfill, some of the toxics can leach into the groundwater, and the groundwater is not...only below the landfill. It goes across boundaries of the landfill. Or the gases which come from the waste, especially if you burn it, can be...very, very dangerous, [creating] something like dioxin, which is called the most toxic compound made by man...it's an endocrine disruptor, it's cancer causing, and can have intergenerational effects as well....[Also], open burning of waste is a significant cause of emissions of carbon which causes global warming."

"...When we start consuming for the sake of consumption...there is no end to it, and I think it is that kind of consumption that we have to put a stop to."

"Are we just taking nature for granted? ...We cannot act irresponsibly on the planet we are born on....Living as part of the nature we are born in, I think that realisation is very important."

"...We need to be active in society. We have to ask for more. We can't just be passive consumers, because if you're passive consumers, you get the worst."

"...anything we put out comes back to us. [If waste is burnt] it'll go in the air, from the air it'll come to your fish and your milk, and it'll be on your plate to eat. So what you throw is what you eat."

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Zero
• Waste
• toxic
• waste
• Deer
• Park
• consumption
• body
• burden
• endocrine
• disruption
• dioxin