NIMBYism Is a Trash Crisis for Southern India

Kerala has a trash problem. Villages in the southern India state have become the site of enormous dumping grounds, few of them planned in any significant way. Even garbage facilities created with some degree of foresight present a serious challenge for the state.

In Vilappilsala, a village near Trivandrum (the capital of Kerala), a prominent, state-of-the-art disposal plant rapidly descended into a disorganized dump over the course of a decade. The private corporation selected to run the facility, which was designed to convert refuse into a composted bio-fuel resource, elected to process only as much garbage as was profitable. The remainder, the plant never processed at all. It simply dumped the trash from the city of Trivandrum in the village. “It is the most dirty place in the Kerala state,” one villager told PRI’s Living on Earth.