Justice
Mumbai's Massive Trash Fire Highlights Its Inequality
The city’s most privileged residents are largely shielded from the environmental hazards that plague those living on the outskirts.
Spanning 326 acres, the Deonar dumping grounds, located in the heart of Mumbai’s lower-middle class eastern suburbs, is the largest dumping site in Asia. Around a third of the city’s trash gets dumped there each day, creating 8 million-pound trash mountains as high as a 100 feet. The landfill is literally spilling over with garbage.
A recent fire on the site, which started for reasons that aren’t yet clear, became so large that the plumes of smoke rising from it were visible from space. Via NASA’s Earth Observatory blog: