Solid Waste Management – A Huge Problem In India
I
ndia’s growth story, especially in the last few decades has also resulted in a rapid increase in both domestic and industrial waste. India’s garbage generation stands at 0.2 to 0.6 kilograms of garbage
per head per day. The per capita
waste generation is so high, that it creates a crisis if the garbage
collector does not visit a neighbourhood for a couple of days.
Waste Disposal in India
The Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in India is generally littered on roadsides and disposed in an unscientific manner. The waste is dumped in the outskirts of cities in low lying areas with no compliance of any waste regulations. This unsatisfactory state of affairs is mirrored even in the industrial sector, where the challenges are steeper in terms of treatment and disposal of hazardous waste.
Improper Disposal of Hazardous Industrial Waste in Gujarat
The Ahmedabad – Vadodara – Surat industrial belt has over 2000 industrial units in the organised sector and more than 63,000 small scale units in the unorganised sector. Vapi in Valsad district has around 1800 units of which 450 fall in the category of polluting units. Industries in all these areas usually dump their waste in low lying areas within a 2 kms radius. As a result, a major illegal dump yard has sprung up on the banks of the river Daman Ganga. Indian Petrochemical Corporation Limited (IPCL) at Vadodara dumps 18000 tonnes of hazardous waste every month at a site near Nandesari. The IPCL dumpsite is on top of a hill. During the rainy season, the hazardous waste is washed down into the river.
A City Municipality’s Waste Management Responsibilities
In India, each municipality is responsible for organising its own waste management in the following areas:
• Waste segregation and storage at source
• Primary collection
• Street sweeping
• Secondary waste storage
• Transportation of waste
• Treatment and recycling of solid waste
• Final disposal
Unfortunately, each of these seven stages are fraught with difficulties and the municipality services in most of the Indian cities have been extremely inefficient. Under the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) 1986, the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) has issued several notifications to tackle the problem of hazardous waste management. These include Municipal Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2000, Hazardous Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 1989, Biomedical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 1998, Hazardous Waste (Management and Handling) Amendment Rules 2000.
Industrial Waste in Mirzapur goes untreated into the Ganga River
Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh (UP) is a hub of thousands of cottage industries manufacturing woollen carpets which earn about 2200 million rupees worth of foreign exchange every year through exports.
One and a half km towards Mirzapur from Ramnagar Fort, one comes across Ghuraha nullah, which carries the waste of the Ramnagar Industrial Area and all the new developing residential colonies. Dyes and detergents used by carpet industries and other untreated industrial effluents find their way through surface run off directly into the river. The industrial units there have established their individual effluent treatment plants (ETPs), but the UP Pollution Control Board has not bothered to conduct a check for a long time.
More than a decade has lapsed since December 2003 - the time limit for the implementation of the above notifications. There are still several cities which have not initiated any waste management measures at all. Given the lack of in-house capability of municipal authorities and paucity of resources, there have been some successful attempts to outsource certain waste management services and resort to private sector/NGO participation in providing services such as door-to door collection, street sweeping, secondary collection of waste, transportation of waste, composting of waste, power generation from waste and final disposal of waste at the engineered landfill sites. The present capacity of municipalities in India to manage the privatisation process is quite limited. The need of the hour is to develop in-house financial and managerial capabilities of the city municipalities to award contracts to the private sector and monitor their services effectively. q
Vandana Saini
vsaini@devalt.org
References
2. Amod Kumar Singh, Rupesh Kumar Singh, 2013, Studies on the effect of carpet industry effluents on wetland flora of mirzapur
3. MoEF (2000) Draft on Status of Implementation of the Hazardous Waste Rules, 1989. New Delhi: MOEF