Solution 1
Composting, treating garbage: Garbage collection is very important no doubt. But after it is collected, it has to be treated. Just collection of garbage is not enough as equally important is segregation and treatment if not the entire place will become a major landfill. Once one area is filled up, then a second area has to be located and that will ultimately fill up and then you move on. For a place like Goa where land is both scarce and also very expensive, this is just not possible to do.
So the garbage has to be just not collected but also treated so that the portion to be buried is very little and the same landfill can be used for a very long time.
Composting has to be done in a scientific way so that all the biodegradable waste can all be reused as manure.
Even at the community level, buildings as well as individual homes composting has to be made compulsory and no permission to be given unless the complex has mini garbage segregation as well as a composting unit.
Even at an individual family level, awareness has to be created and composting has to be compulsorily done at home too.
Solution 2
Segregating plastic: Segregation of plastic is a must for any village. The wonder product due to its almost indestructible quality is like a knife. Plastic is a very useful product and is part of a lot of the everyday food items that people use. The Calangute–Candolim belt, being a tourist belt, this type of usage is much higher.
Plastics are used by locals – families – as well as tourists.
Most carry bags are of plastic. Also milk and bread come in plastic packets.
Modern dustbins are from plastic kits. Most readymade eatables are tetra packs or plastic.
Bottled water used mostly by tourists is plastic.
Plastic can be reused if properly collected.
Awareness has to be created not to put biodegradable items in plastic bags. It becomes very dirty to expect any ragpicker or worker to remove that from the plastic bags. So it just lands up in the landfill.
Plastic can be collected and sold to ragpickers. This is then reused.
Even the baling that the government is doing is not a good solution, experts from the industry say. As 90% of the plastic is reusable if properly collected and stored.
Solution 3
Coordinating: Tourism is beneficial to the State. However, though the intentions of the authorities in most cases may be good, the final product many times gets hijacked by politics or petty parochial interests.
Their lack of coordination sees that the issue suffers and ultimately the problem is not resolved. The whole discussion degenerates into a catfight and the problem just festers.
Coordination is the key since most stakeholders have good plans and do good work as individuals. But the final product or solution eludes them as there is no coordination between the various well meaning stakeholders.
Even for creating awareness, proper coordination is very important, and if there is no coordination then various well meaning people will be pulling in different directions.
