photo credit: nswai.com
A Solid Waste Policy was framed in September 2000 by the National Solid Waste Association of India, which was planned by the Committee for Solid Waste Management in Class 1 Cities of India to the Supreme Court. The implementation encouraged statutory bodies to comply with the March 1999 Report’s suggestions and recommendations for waste management. MSW Management rules were also written as a guide based on the fundamental principle that the best way to keep the streets of India clean is not to dirty them in the first place.
A summary of the rules formed:
- Place street bins in the city to discourage citizens from littering.
- Ensure community participation in waste segregation- separating wet waste from dry recyclables such as plastics, paper, metal or glass.
- A daily door-to-door collection of wet waste (comprising mostly of food) for composting at fixed times in multi-container handcarts or tricycles.
- Trucks that stop at street corners on regular scheduled timings to collect wet waste.
- Dry waste to be left for collection by the informal sector. (waste-pickers who sell them to waste-buyers for recycling)
- Ban the burning of garbage and dry leaves on the streets.
- Ban the haphazard practice of mixing biomedical and industrial waste with municipal waste.
- Prohibition of littering and disposal of garbage on roads.
- Citizens encouraged to keep wet waste and dry recyclables within their premises until collected by the door-to-door garbage service,
These rules seemed promising at the time, and the policy was given a strict deadline to adhere to, and 2003 was the deadline in which all the facilities mentioned above were supposed to be built. However, present landfills are still being under-utilized, and disposal facilities and waste-processing plants are still insufficient to cope with the output of garbage.
This is possibly due to a lack of clear thinking behind the successive initiatives for waste management. Perhaps it was unrealistic to set a 3 year timespan to such an overwhelming project. In addition to that, the Solid Waste Policy failed to address equity aspects and expected every citizen to abide by their waste collection rules. However, probably the most important cause was the failure to enforce regulatory measures in this public program on the part of city officials. The authorities did not engage in the rules to reduce waste, promote waste segregation or support recycling and reuse. Yes, this elaborate program was never implemented.