Garbage spills raise a stink in Bur Dubai

Dubai Residents of Bur Dubai are crying foul over overflowing garbage bins and messy spills as they are emptied into municipal garbage trucks.

Tenants said waste management in their locality requires urgent attention as bins overflowing with garbage sit outside their buildings, spoiling the aesthetics of the area and creating a terrible stench. Worse, they said their apartments do not have the facilities to segregate waste, with everything from paper and glass to food and liquid waste going down the same chutes.

Aaditya Singh, a Grade 5 student who lives on Bank Street, said the garbage spills ensure an ugly start to his day every morning. “I leave for school at 6.30am. The five-to-seven minutes wait for the school bus outside my building is the worst part of my day as it coincides with the time that the municipal trucks collect garbage from our street. Besides the stench, a lot of loosely packed waste falls on the street while the trucks empty the bins.”

An Indian woman living nearby said: “The problem lies with the homes as residents don’t empty liquids or segregate waste. The building managements are also to blame as they do not provide separate bins or chutes for different kinds of waste.”

Alice, an American expat, said: “If I can make a special trip to a supermarket close by to dispose off cans, bottles and paper that I put aside, why can’t the others? Better ways to disposing off food and liquid waste need to be devised in our homes.”