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The recent news item that the Western Provincial Council (WPC) proposes to charge a fee for garbage collection evokes amusement and anger.

Garbage disposal, the euphemism today being 'solid waste management', has always been a function of the local authorities, both in this country and elsewhere. The service is best administered by the institution which is the closest to ratepayers. The delegation of functions to the lowest feasible level strengthens democracy. If the local authority is incapable, as it happens to be in this case, the remedy would be to strengthen its hands; not to take the function away from it. The WPC or the central government does not have to get their hands soiled with garbage.

COLOMBO: The Supreme Court granted leave to proceed in a case filed against the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) and 13 others by lawyers for Human Rights and Development alleging that the fundamental rights of Sri Lankans have been infringed by the failure of respondents to remove garbage from streets regularly and from mismanagement of solid waste within the Colombo city and in the Western Province.

A coalition of five leading supermarkets announced at a press conference today that, under the patronage of the Central Environmental Authority (CEA), they would be launching a campaign from 1 August to completely deter the use of plastic shopping bags by their customers.

After offering eco-friendly alternatives to customers, the five supermarkets - namely, Keells Super, Cargills Food City, Arpico Supercentre, Laugfs SunUp and Magna - will start charging customers who opt to use of plastic bags at the check out counters at all their outlets. The cost of the bags would range from Rs.2-5, depending on the size (small, medium, large).

The students in my class had listened to a guest speaker from a foundation for protecting the environment on the current polythene menace. “Polythene adds to environmental pollution,” the speaker had announced. “It doesn’t bio-degrade. As a result, it accumulates as a solid waste on the surface of the earth. It has a number of environmental issues. It clogs drains and causes floods in the cities. It helps mosquitoes to breed by collecting pools of water. It also makes the environment ugly. So the government’s recent ban of polythene with 20 microns or less was a correct decision,” he had declared to an emotionally driven audience of students. By the time he had finished his lecture, practically everyone had been enlisted as bastions of the anti-polythene campaign.