Chimney's on the Streets

If you take a swab of cotton with any cleanser & wipe your face at the end of the day..hmmm. it will look like you have just walked out of a coal mine. The cotton will be a rich grey color and these days the streets are filled with auto carbon spewing machines.

Pollution is quite a wide wide topic, one issue which irritates me so much that my friends joke about it is the complete apathy of vehicles on emission. These days travelling in our cities is quite a toxic affair, the amount of Carbon Monoxide inhaled along with precious amounts of other items and of course the effect of pollution on skin , hair etc.

The main culprit s are the smoke billowing vehicles, usually Govt. Public Transport Vehicles or Private Vehicles meant to transport public. Its chimney would be sprouting smoke especially while waiting at the umpteen signals and traffic snarls.

Auto’s, bikes, old trucks, Taxi’s, BPO vehicles and Govt. busses are frequent chimney’s on the road. I sometimes wonder why such a highly evident emission lag is not catching the police eye.

Usually our traffic police staff, especially by month end when the coffers are nearing empty, they are out looking for all sorts of traffic miscreants but you will never catch them booking on emission control problem. This too when the traffic police perched on their traffic islands are the worst affected by the same.

There are strict restrictions on emission control with the certification expiring every 6 months but enforcement of regulation and random checks is missing. Let ‘s forget government apathy for the moment, but public awareness is the key problem. Govt. vehicles especially busses must have strict rules on age of fleet size. LNG vehicles would bring in some amount of change. Companies need to ensure that their vehicles are strictly within the emission norms and there needs to be overhaul of fleet to ensure that vehicles with stricter norms are enforced.

For eg: if a manufacturing company which is committed to environment and sustainability needs to get proper assurance from the logistics provider that the trucks / trailers they use have proper emission control. Similarly I think it is the responsibility of the BPO companies to ensure that the vehicles which they have outsourced are proper. In this manner the industry will be forced to change as it involves their business.

With the increase in population and industrialization this problem is only bound to increase and in a power starved company electric cars and not in sight in the foreseeable future. However some amount of public awareness and commitment towards society can make a sea change.