Waste management-crisis & realisation

 

Waste Management is reaching a crisis and emergency stage in our country. Leaving apart few cities across the country. Remaining ones are seriously grappling from complete lack of handling different types of waste generated by residential and commercial communities.

Take the example of gurugram (gurgaon) city in the state of Haryana. A town included in the Delhi NCR. The city has still been unable to manage 100% collection of its urban mixed waste via door to door methodology. Forget about the collection of segregated waste from homes. Which appears as a distant dream. The goal of daily collection of mixed waste from entire city of gurugram does not exist.

Why? The rules and guidelines set by Central Government in the form of Solid Waste Management Rules (SWM'16) were framed way back in 2016. Link: https://cpcb.nic.in/rules-2/ The document clearly state the rules, policies and practices to be adopted for complete waste management in different categories. Residential, Commercial, Medical & Hospital, Electronics & Electricals.

Largely, the SWM'16 Policy document incorporated all the aspects governing waste mgmt. Barring few controversial directives. E.g. Establishment of Waste To Energy (WtE) Plants. All the states of Bharat were supposed to adopt the core of SWM'16 Rules and add their own state by-laws to it. Then execute across their respective regions at state levels. Thus, making it important & mandatory for all State Governments to fully implement the policy through their respective City Municipalities.

Why Gurugram and other urban towns and cities unable to achieve success? Its a saga!! Which cannot be stated in this article alone. In case of gurugram the primary reason is based on faulty terms & conditions in appointment of the concessionaire (agency designated for handling city's waste). To sum up in few words. Main reason was 'corruption'! Both in policy, functioning of agency and in execution of its services. A complete faulty waste policy was drafted at state level and entire benefit was passed onto a single agency, which never ever performed to its potential & expectation of SWM'16. Resulting in complete devastating state of waste mgmt affairs in gurugram & even faridabad. Where garbage is still dumped in open across different regions of the city, both old & new gurugram limits. Segregated waste if collected is again mixed by the agency. Then segregated again at their transferring centers. Where some form of commercially viable plastics & metals are segregated through manual processes. The remaining mixed waste is dumped at Bandhwari. Only some amount of green waste is converted into compost. If 100% Source Segregation existed. The situation had been completely different.

Whatever is being collected is largely mixed waste. Mixed waste meaning; A form of waste comprising bio degradable from plants & greens, all forms of plastics, sanitary items of women & children, condoms, home based medical items, rejected & unused medicines, some forms of metals and other unspecified toxic items. Ideally, all the above mentioned waste should be duly segregated by the citizens and then handed over to the appointed waste collecting agencies. Both residential & commercial (guidelines for commercial & industries are different). They should further ensure that segregated waste remains segregated and not get mixed with each other. The moment it is mixed! It is nearly impossible to completely segregate various forms of toxic waste from each other. Once this waste is collected in mixed form, it is dumped at a dumpsite, somewhere outside the city boundaries. Bandhwari in the case of gurugram & faridabad. Where the mixed waste rots for years to some and pollute both air & underground surface. The segregated waste is then processed by the agency based on its origin. Green waste is converted to either compost or utilized for bio methanation (gas & compost are the outout). Plastic which can be recycled is duly sold to competent recycling units. Similarly all other form of waste are processed based on thier nature of origin. The waste which cannot be processed by any means has another set of guidelines for them. Henceforth, the total waste which was dumped at Bandhwari had been very less. Compared to its current situation. Which is nothing less than a Giant Mountain aka 'Kachra Pahad' of gurugram faridabad. Due to non-execution of SWM'16 Policy & Source Segregation.

The above situation vividly states the reason behind the immense logic behind segregation at source. Then processing the waste accordingly. E.g. Indore City waste mgmt. It is an excellent model case study for entire nation. Including Mysore and host of other urbal local bodies across Bharat. Gurugram residents should demand the Indore model to be implemented in their city. But it has been a decade and there are no healthy signs in achieving the Indore or waste models of other cities which align with SWM'16 Rules. Entire Bharat should comply and not just few cities & towns. Entire country has to align with Indore & Mysore models. Whichever model is best for them. But if we continue to hand over mixed waste to our municipalities and then continue to dump it at dumpyards outside our cities. It would result in creation of hundred and thousands of Kachra Pahad (waste mountains) exist across length & breadth of the nation. Leading to high levels of pollution and dirtiness in our beloved country.