A few days ago, my friend Javaid sent me a video from Chandpora in Harwan, Srinagar. A huge heap of wedding waste had been dumped beside the Srinagar-Harwan road. Someone had collected the waste after a marriage function and left it there as though the road itself were a dumping ground.

I uploaded the video on social media and asked the Srinagar Municipal Corporation and local police to identify those responsible and take action under the law. 

I have seen similar scenes for years, with wedding waste often dumped in forests, village commons, streams, canals and small lakes. In Srinagar and other towns, some families carry the waste to the Jhelum, Dal Lake or nearby roadsides.

The irony is that the municipal system already collects wedding waste. The deeper failure begins after the collection, and often before it. 

Families, caterers and wedding organisers routinely mix leftover food with plastic. Municipal vehicles then take this mixed waste to disposal sites, where a material that could have been separated and processed becomes part of a much larger burden.

Achan Syedpora shows where this habit leads. 

Official figures put the waste there at around 11.50 lakh metric tonnes. Unofficial estimates put it above 15 lakh tonnes. I took the issue to the National Green Tribunal two years ago. The tribunal imposed large penalties on the Srinagar Municipal Corporation, and Rs 361 crore has now been sanctioned for restoring the legacy waste through biomining. 

The corporation has sought two........

© Kashmir Observer