Snack shacks on Doon-Mussoorie highway major polluters, finds study

Mussoorie: If the winding road from Doon to Mussoorie has made you stop and take a small break and enjoy a steaming hot bowl of noodles or tea at any of the snack joints dotting the road (which are popularly known as

Maggi Points

), you may have contributed to the growing pollution on the hill side.

In a first of its kind study by Doon-based research and policy think tank Gati Foundation, more than a thousand instant noodle packets, mostly of the popular Maggi brand are used in these shacks on a daily basis. The empty, multi-layered plastic packets are then either dumped in the open or burnt thereby polluting the soil and air in the hillside.

Speaking about the study, Anoop Nautiyal, founder of Gati Foundation, told TOI, “The study was conducted over three days during which our volunteers surveyed 60-odd Maggi Points along the Doon-Mussoorie highway. The findings were a revelation of sorts. Imagine the waste that has been dumped over the years in the hills, thanks to improper waste management.”

The foundation now plans to take the findings of the study and an earlier audit (which had revealed that 50 per cent of Mussoorie’s waste is plastic) to make a formal complaint with the Uttarakhand Pollution Control Board invoking the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) clause of the Plastic Waste Management Rules 2016.

According to the EPR clause, a producer has to take responsibility of its product, once the product’s life cycle is completed. Also, as per the EPR, the producer should not use multi-layer packaging for their products. Instead, an eco-friendly packaging mechanism should be adopted.

“Nestle’s Maggi, Pepsico's Lay and Parle Agro’s Frooti tetrapacks make up the top three products whose plastic waste is the maximum in Mussoorie according to a brand audit study we carried out in May. We will make a submission to all the three companies as well as start a signature campaign to include citizens and make this a citizen’s movement”, added Nautiyal.

The study, he pointed out, was just a small pointer to the larger problem of waste management in the hill town which generates an average waste of 18-20 metric tonne per day currently. This number goes upto 25-30 metric tonne per day during the tourist season as well as long weekends. This puts a lot of pressure on the sole dumping ground in Mussoorie, Gadi Khana, which has been operating since the British era.

“Currently the waste from entire Mussoorie comes here which makes it very difficult to manage. The fact that there is no waste segregation at source makes our job extremely difficult. We do manage to get about a quintal of plastic out every day but there is definitely more that we could, if we had the manpower,” said Surendra Pal, who manages the dumping ground.