Abu Talib points at the mountain of waste on fire and the grey cloud of smoke that has obscured the blue sky over the Indian capital, Delhi. “Almost every summer [for] the last few years, this has been happening,” he says.
We are standing on the edge of an open drain choked with household waste in Ghazipur, to the east of the city. Plastic, paper, sanitary napkins and everything else is stuck in the water drain, preventing it from flowing as it should.
Ghazipur, one of Delhi’s three designated landfills, is supposed to deal with the waste generated by the whole city. Instead, it is struggling with its own.
