Municipal Solid Waste
Some of the few solid waste landfills India has, near the major cities, are overflowing and poorly managed. Other landfills are under-utilised. This disorganised control of facilities seems to me is the most unnecessary cause of the problem, as it could otherwise greatly help in waste management.
In the cities, there is limited funding marked for the municipalities. These limitations make the cities to ill-equipped to provide for high costs involved in the collection, storage, treatment, and proper disposal of waste. Solid waste management has been dominated by ‘hard’ approaches with technical solutions, such as the introduction of vehicles with mechanical pick-up facilities and appropriately designed collection bins to avoid multiple manual operations in handling waste. Technical solutions often require revamping of the entire waste management system (in the above example, existing collection bins would have to be replaced with bins that can be picked up mechanically). However, these technical solutions cannot be implemented because of the aforementioned limitations on funding.
Another issue is the inconvenience of engaging in waste disposal behaviours because of the highly disorganized systems and poor infrastructure. It is hard to control the constraints in the management of waste because of the severe lack of recycling facilities. In addition to that, the logistics (lack of dedicated waste collectors) behind waste management is too inefficient.
The current social disparity in India also has a part to play in the severe lack of infrastructure. The inequity of waste disposal infrastructure between rich and poor areas is another phenomenon rife in Indian cities, with high-income zones cornering most of the available waste disposable amenities.
Sewage
A report by the non-government organisation, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), Delhi, based on a nationwide survey of 71 Indian cities, highlights the lack of infrastructure and the neglect of sewage with less than 30% of the country’s officially recorded sewage being treated in proper facilities. As it stands, the cities of Delhi and Mumbai account for 40% of the country’s entire sewage-treatment capacity, leaving the rest of the country with completely inadequate sewage infrastructure.
Almost all of waste water is let out into drains that carry untreated sewage and end up in the country’s lakes and rivers. This is because old pipeline infrastructure could not keep pace with India’s ever-expanding cities, resulting in large urban areas being devoid of planned water supply and sewage treatment. Only 5% of piped water reaches slum areas in 42 cities and towns.