Ashish wakes up to the sound of a van – it is around 6 in the morning and time for duty. He greets Ramin and Sagar, who are there to take government vehicle for collection of waste from around the neighbourhood. Soon, Ramin, Sagar and others will start arriving at the same place with vans filled with waste. They will drop all of it into a little open space created in the government waste compression facility. But, before compression, they would enter into the heap of garbage to segregate wet waste from dry, paper from plastic, polythene from glass, biodegradable wet waste from bio-hazardous waste. He wonders about the use of speakers in those waste collection vans when even after years, people continue to choose to give their waste unsegregated.
Waste is defined as anything that one finds not useful or unwanted. With almost every product that we use, we generate some waste. Naturally, due to rapidly increasing population in urban areas in recent years, cities are witnessing mammoth amount of waste being generated, which is increasingly becoming a challenge for governments and administrations to deal with. Cities, that are supposed to be at the core of development and progress, are currently home to a number of open landfill spots.
Two years after the highly acclaimed programme, ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’ was launched by the Government of India, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) notified the new Solid Waste Management Rules (SWM), 2016. It replaced the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000, which had been in place for 16 years. The purposeful SWM, 2016, introduced some much-awaited rules and directions for management of solid waste across the nation.
Segregation at Source
According to World Population Review, the metropolitan area of Delhi has over 32.1 million people and over 3.4 million housing units. The capital city of India generates around 11,144 tonnes of solid waste daily, as reported by the Government of Delhi in December 2021. The number, however, does not account for the waste collected and disposed by informal waste collectors across the city.
The waste collected, dry waste like paper, plastic, and metal are to be sent to factories to recycle them; wet wastes like vegetable peels are to be sent to industries to convert them into manure and energy; and domestic hazardous waste such as sanitary napkins, cleaning agents, and diapers are dealt with separately by incineration; segregation becomes an essential part of handling of waste.
The SWM, 2016, mandates the source segregation of waste to channelise the waste to wealth by recovery, reuse and recycling. Waste generators are required to segregate waste into three streams- Biodegradables, Dry, and Domestic Hazardous waste before handing it over to the collector. Once generators mix the three categories of waste and hand it as such to the collectors, the collectors are left with the responsibility of going through the heaps of waste to segregate each item with their bare hands – like Ashish does, at a government waste compression centre in Janakpuri.
Delhi, the city which is supposed to be the reflection of the whole nation is currently largely falling behind in its handling of waste, as is evident from the 2020-2021 Delhi Economic Survey, which reported that in only 94 out of the total 294 wards of the city, waste is segregated at source. As generators of waste, people stand to lose nothing by submitting their waste in accordance with the categories to the collectors, but workers like Ashish are exposed to chemicals, toxics, allergens, etc. that more often than not ends up making them sick.
Derelict citizens and authorities
The city administrations, a few years ago, replaced conventional waste collection vehicles with vehicles having three separate compartments for three categories of waste. Vinod, one of the drivers of the waste collection unit of Janakpuri area, has been collecting waste from Janakpuri area for six years now. He said that people dumping their waste remain deaf and blind to instructions on public announcement system of vehicle and descriptions on the vehicle.
In a small survey conducted by the Team Urban Update, people cited ‘time consuming’ and ‘hassle’ as reasons for not practicing the rule that is their responsibility. Some said that since their informal waste collectors do not have separate compartments for carrying the collected waste and end up mixing all bags ultimately, they choose to not segregate either. This reflects how government and administrators continue to neglect the informal sector of waste management, even though the SWM, 2016, mentioned the necessity of integrating rag pickers, waste collectors and kabadi walas from the informal sector into the formal sector to build efficient network of waste management, where each article of waste can be traced and treated appropriately.
mounting landfills, not wealth
In the survey conducted, 45.5 per cent of the total respondents mentioned that their waste is collected by informal waste collectors and 7 per cent said that they themselves dump their waste at nearby landfill site or black spot. These informal waste collectors tend to segregate the waste into wet and dry – they sell the dry waste that would include paper, plastic, wood, and metal, to kabadi walas and dump the wet waste, including the domestic hazardous waste, at nearby landfill sites.
Only 25 of the 88 respondents in the survey said that they do not have any landfill site near their home or workplace. In addition to adding a black spot in a city, open landfill sites are a major source of pollution, toxins, leachate, and other harmful gases that have been linked to birth defects and other serious health problems. According to a study report submitted by a team of experts to the National Green Tribunal, Delhi’s three large landfill sites – Okhla, Bhalswa and Ghazipur – that receive over 10,000 tonnes of waste daily, have cost the city over `450 crores in environmental degradation. Smaller, unofficial landfill sites across the city remain unaccounted for.
Compliance
Rules and laws in a nation, city or community are formed to organise the relations between individuals and society; to establish what is right and wrong; to ensure safety, fairness, and respect for everyone. Much as it is the responsibility of local governments to ensure compliance of waste management regulation, citizens are responsible at individual level and as a community to do their part by complying with the rules established – by segregating their waste at home, by using public dustbins instead of sidewalks and foot of trees, and by owning the responsibility of keeping their city clean. Over 65 per cent of the respondents of our survey believe that introduction and implementation of penalties are sure to make people more responsible in terms of how they handle their waste. Framing rules and building infrastructure for waste management is equally important as making the people part of the process.