Abstract:
Whatever man uses, and also all that he makes for his use will inevitably becomes waste. Although humans and animals have used the earth's natural resources since evolution to support their lives and also to dispose their waste, what their small primitive populations widespread and few, generated as waste, posed no problems for the environment. But as humans began to congregate in larger and larger settlements, the accumulation of waste became a consequence of life. Littering of food and other solid wastes in medieval towns- the practice of throwing wastes into the unpaved streets, roadways and vacant land- led to the breeding of rats, with their attendant fleas carrying the germs of disease, and the outbreak of plague. The lack of any plan for the management of solid wastes led to the epidemic of plague, the Black Death, that killed half of the Europeans in the fourteenth century and caused many subsequent epidemics and high death tolls. It was not until the nineteenth century that public health control measures became a vital consideration to public officials who began to realize that food wastes had to be collected and disposed off in . a sanitary manner to control the vectors of diseases (Tchobancglous, et e1,1977).
Unfortunately for us, in India the issue of management of solid waste had not received its due attention and ill informed, disinterested and corrupt municipal authorities paid scant notice to heaps of garbage in many of the large cities. The plague epidemic in Surat ensued, claiming about a hundred lives, causing national shame and outrage on the precarious public health conditions prevalent.
