SWM is everyone’s responsibility

Urban Update organised the fourteenth edition of the E-Dialogues series as a pre-event of UNCRD’s 3R and Circular Economy Forum 2020. The topic for this Webinar was ‘Sustainable Solid Waste Management during COVID-19’. The panel for the Webinar consisted of Aditi Ramola, Technical Director, International Solid Waste Association; Dr Roshan Miranda, Co-Founder and Director, Waste Ventures, Hyderabad; Sonia Duhan, Waste Management Expert, Municipal Corporation Gurugram and Francesca Calisesi, Associate Officer, Solid Waste Management Team, Urban Basic Services Section, UN-Habitat. Dr Kulwant Singh, Former Asia Advisor, UN-Habitat, moderated the session.
Dr Singh introduced the theme of the webinar by pointing to the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the issue of health and sanitation workers’ safety to the forefront, revealing the unsafe and unsanitary conditions that they work in. “Thus, this edition of E-Dialogues aims to bring their plight before the eyes of the common people and find solutions to tackle this problem. Moreover, by talking to experts and people who have worked at the grassroots level, we also wish to popularize efforts of local governments and municipalities in safeguarding sanitary workers’ right to a healthy working environment,” said Dr Singh.
Dr Singh invited Aditi Ramola as the first speaker. “With an ever-growing urban population, the ever expanding volume and complexity of solid waste and the changing household consumption patterns, particularly during COVID-19, have quickly made solid waste management a nightmare for numerous governments,” said Ramola. She added that the pandemic has also caused an increase in some waste streams and a decrease in others. For example, city administrations have seen a massive rise in the number of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) like gloves and masks coming from households. This has been accompanied with a rise in the volume of single use plastics as well. Thus, municipal corporations around the world are now facing an unprecedented crisis in waste collection, segregation and disposal. Ramola concluded by saying that she believes in the post-COVID world, waste management services will move aggressively towards automation, an extensive use of technology, while governments will move towards adopting circular economies to drastically reduce the total waste generated and
resources wasted.
Dr Roshan Miranda began by stating that solid waste is the world’s second biggest producer of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Although, waste management experts expected that due to COVID-19, people will learn the importance of sustainable waste management. Although the realization came, it wasn’t as effective as was expected. Moreover, dumping yards now not only have hazardous plastic waste but also PPE kits acting as a major health hazard for sanitation workers and those living around them. Additionally, improper waste collection turns the waste pickers into disease carriers, putting not only their own lives at risk but also increasing the possibility of transmitting the disease from one house/locality to the other. “The absence of a uniform waste management method, especially in the case of bio hazards like gloves and masks is also a huge risk that India faces. Thus, we must work together with the government and municipal corporations to import advanced and innovative waste management equipment in India and make it a safe activity for all,” said Dr Miranda while concluding his argument.
Sonia Duhan was invited next to present the viewpoint of a corporation in handling the increased and more complex volumes of waste during COVID-19. She verified the claims of the other panellists and said that during the pandemic, the corporation was burdened with numerous additional services. These included a larger inflow of different types of waste (dry, waste and biomedical hazardous), a greater requirement for better waste segregation at source and regular and uninterrupted waste collection services in all COVID and non-COVID houses and hospitals. In order to fulfil these requirements, the Municipal Corporation Gurugram (MCG) undertook various measures like labelling houses with COVID-19 positive patients as a ‘quarantine household’, spreading awareness amongst the societies on the need to maintain social distancing and disposing of waste from quarantine households separately and spreading awareness among the waste collectors/pickers on the dangers of coming in direct contact with bio hazardous waste coming from households and the methods of handling it safely. All in all, despite a gigantic rise in the city’s population over the years and an uncontrolled rise in COVID cases, the MCG was able to successfully and safely handle all waste generated by the city’s residents during and after the lockdown.
Francesca Calisesi, representing UN-Habitat’s Waste Wise Cities Program (WWCP), was the last to present her organisation’s role in helping municipal corporations tackle COVID waste responsibly globally. She began by explaining what the WWCP is and how COVID-19 has only intensified the problem of solid waste management (SWM) in cities around the world. “UN-Habitat, through the WWCP, has also issued strategy guidelines for better SWM. This guideline includes a 10 point strategy and includes measures like experience and knowledge sharing between different cities, interconnectivity of different stakeholders responsible for SWM within a city and continuous expansion and technological advancement of SWM services,” she said. Thus, UN-Habitat has tried to maintain a constant flow of research data on SWM, particularly due to its changing role during the pandemic, and helped cities cope with the ongoing crisis.
Dr Kulwant Singh concluded the fruitful and enlightening webinar by saying that the pandemic has increased importance of knowledge sharing, sharing of best practices and coordination between different cities to manage solid waste responsibly. It has also shown that municipal corporations and local governments around the world are fully capable of handling a crisis as big as this one and proven to the world that their role in the lives of the citizens
is indispensable.