Challenges and opportunities associated with waste management in India

India faces major environmental challenges associated with waste generation and inadequate waste collection, transport, treatment and disposal. Current systems in India cannot cope with the volumes of waste generated by an increasing urban population, and this impacts on the environment and public health. The challenges and barriers are significant, but so are the opportunities. This paper reports on an international seminar on ‘Sustainable solid waste management for cities: opportunities in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries’ organized by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and the Royal Society. A priority is to move from reliance on waste dumps that offer no environmental protection, to waste management systems that retain useful resources within the economy. Waste segregation at source and use of specialized waste processing facilities to separate recyclable materials has a key role. Disposal of residual waste after extraction of material resources needs engineered landfill sites and/or investment in waste-to-energy facilities. The potential for energy generation from landfill via methane extraction or thermal treatment is a major opportunity, but a key barrier is the shortage of qualified engineers and environmental professionals with the experience to deliver improved waste management systems in India.

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A Review : Sustainability from Waste

International Journal of Scientific Research in Science and Technology ◽

10.32628/ijsrst196630 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 134-155

Author(s):

Kriti Jain ◽

Chirag Shah

Keyword(s):

Waste Management ◽

Solid Waste ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Waste To Energy ◽

Waste Generation ◽

Material Resources ◽

Waste Dumps ◽

Waste Segregation ◽

Treatment And Disposal ◽

Engineered Landfill

The increasing volume and complexity of waste associated with the modern economy as due to the ranging population, is posing a serious risk to ecosystems and human health. Every year, an estimated 11.2 billion tonnes of solid waste is collected worldwide and decay of the organic proportion of solid waste is contributing about 5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions (UNEP). Poor waste management - ranging from non-existing collection systems to ineffective disposal causes air pollution, water and soil contamination. Open and unsanitary landfills contribute to contamination of drinking water and can cause infection and transmit diseases. The dispersal of debris pollutes ecosystems and dangerous substances from waste or garbage puts a strain on the health of urban dwellers and the environment. India, being second most populated country of the world that too with the lesser land area comparatively, faces major environmental challenges associated with waste generation and inadequate waste collection, transport, treatment and disposal. Population explosion, coupled with improved life style of people, results in increased generation of solid wastes in urban as well as rural areas of the country. The challenges and barriers are significant, but so are the opportunities. A priority is to move from reliance on waste dumps that offer no environmental protection, to waste management systems that retain useful resources within the economy [2]. Waste segregation at source and use of specialized waste processing facilities to separate recyclable materials has a key role. Disposal of residual waste after extraction of material resources needs engineered landfill sites and/or investment in waste-to-energy facilities. This study focusses on the minimization of the waste and gives the brief about the various initiations for proper waste management system. Hence moving towards the alternatives is the way to deal with these basic problems. This paper outlines various advances in the area of waste management. It focuses on current practices related to waste management initiatives taken by India. The purpose of this article put a light on various initiatives in the country and locates the scope for improvement in the management of waste which will also clean up the unemployment.

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Status of Solid Waste Management in Myanmar

Advances in Environmental Engineering and Green Technologies - Sustainable Waste Management Challenges in Developing Countries ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-0198-6.ch009 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 223-247

Author(s):

Premakumara Jagath Dickella Gamaralalage ◽

Ohnmar May Tin Hlaing ◽

Aung Myint Maw ◽

Matthew Hengesbaugh

Keyword(s):

Waste Management ◽

Solid Waste ◽

Urban Growth ◽

Poverty Reduction ◽

Solid Waste Management ◽

Production And Consumption ◽

Social And Economic Development ◽

Challenges And Opportunities ◽

Management Policies ◽

Treatment And Disposal

Myanmar, the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia, has been facing considerable challenges with the management of solid waste in the recent past because of increasing income and consumption patterns, urban growth, and lack of effective waste management policies, treatment, and disposal methods. Waste management is also a crosscutting issue that touches on many aspects of social and economic development, and as such is widely associated with a range of global challenges including public health, climate change, poverty reduction, food security, resource efficiency, and sustainable production and consumption. This country chapter therefore presents an overview of the current waste management in Myanmar, discusses key challenges and opportunities, and identifies some policy recommendations towards its improvement.

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Potential for the First WTE Facility in Mumbai (Bombay) India

16th Annual North American Waste-to-Energy Conference ◽

10.1115/nawtec16-1930 ◽

2008 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Perinaz Bhada ◽

Nickolas J. Themelis

Keyword(s):

Waste Management ◽

Solid Waste ◽

Traffic Congestion ◽

Fossil Fuels ◽

Solid Waste Management ◽

Collection Efficiency ◽

Solid Wastes ◽

Waste To Energy ◽

Waste Dumps ◽

The City

The city of Mumbai (Bombay), India is facing a solid waste management crisis. The infrastructure has been unable to keep pace with economic development and population growth, resulting in insufficient collection of municipal solid waste (MSW) and over-burdened dumps. Improper disposal of solid wastes over several decades and open burning of garbage have led to serious environmental pollution and health problems. This study examined the solid waste management process in Mumbai and the potential for implementation of waste-to-energy facilities. Mumbai’s average per capita waste generation rate is 0.18 tonnes per person. Although the reported collection efficiency of MSW is 90%, almost half of the city’s 12 million people live in slums, some of which do not have access to solid waste services. The most pressing problem is the acute shortage of space for landfilling. When the present waste dumps were constructed they were at the outskirts of the city, but now they are surrounded by housing colonies, thus exposing millions of people to daily inconveniences such as odors, traffic congestion, and to more serious problems associated with air, land, and water pollution and the spread of diseases from rodents and mosquitoes. Mumbai is the financial center of India and has the highest potential for energy generation from the controlled combustion of solid wastes. The lower heating value of MSW is estimated in this study to be 9 MJ/kg, which is slightly lower than the average MSW combusted in the E.U. (10 MJ/kg). The land for the first WTE in Mumbai would be provided by the City and there is a market for the electricity generated by the WTE facility. The main problem to overcome is the source of capital since the present “tipping fees” are very low and inadequate to make the operation profitable and thus attract private investors. Therefore, the only hope is for the local government and one or more philanthropists in Mumbai to team up in financing the first WTE in India as a beacon that improves living conditions in Mumbai, reduces the City’s dependence on the import of fossil fuels, and lights the way for other cities in India to follow.

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Towards flexible evaluation schemes in areas with lacking information: a case of waste governance in Mexico

International Review of Administrative Sciences ◽

10.1177/00208523211017970 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 002085232110179

Author(s):

Dolores Elizabeth Turcott Cervantes ◽

Beatriz Adriana Venegas Sahagún ◽

Amaya Lobo García de Cortázar

Keyword(s):

Waste Management ◽

Municipal Solid Waste ◽

Solid Waste ◽

Local Governments ◽

Public Services ◽

Solid Waste Management ◽

Management Systems ◽

Sufficient Information ◽

Municipal Solid Waste Management ◽

Stage Of Development

Local governments face the need to achieve sustainability in the provision of public services, and to do so, proper governance is essential. This work proposes a method to assess governance in local waste management systems based on a set of indicators that are flexible and robust enough to allow objective and reliable evaluation even where the information that is available is deficient. The proposal is based on a set of indicators divided into six categories that represent an increasing order of governance maturity: institutional framework; government effectiveness; transparency and accountability; network creation; participation; and corruption control. The article presents the proposal and a first test in two Mexican municipalities, which are an example of municipal solid waste management systems in an incipient stage of development, where there may be serious limitations in terms of access to information. The results show that the methodology can be replicated in different contexts and can be useful for making decisions about improvements in municipal solid waste management systems or for comparing them with others. In addition, sufficient information was obtained for a first diagnosis of the cases studied, which indicates the coherence of the proposed framework. Points for practitioners Proper governance is essential to achieve sustainability in the provision of public services. The assessment of local governance must be robust enough to motivate changes and, at the same time, flexible enough to allow reliable evaluation where the quality of service and the availability of information may be scant. We propose a new framework for the assessment of governance in municipal solid waste management systems that meets these requirements, based on a set of indicators clustered according to governance maturity.

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