Municipal Solid Waste: Pollution of Urban India

Dr. Jiaul Islam

"Poverty is the worst polluter" was spelt out by our late prime minister, Smt. Indira Gandhi at the first UN Conference on Human Environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden in 1972. She was aptly right to identify the most important polluter of our environment at about four decades ago. But, the nature of pollution and polluters has undergone a diverse change around the world since then. Time has come to introspect ourselves. Now, it is the affluence not the poverty, the major factor behind the rapid pollution of our environment. The economic development and population growth with its concentration in towns and cities, and higher living standards have led to the emergence of third pollution, solid waste after water and air pollution. India has been no exception to this worldwide phenomenon. Consumption, linked to per capita income, has a strong relationship with waste generation. As per capita income rises more savings are spent on goods and services especially when the transition is from a low income to a middle income level. Urbanization not only concentrates waste but also raises its generation rates since rural populations consume less than urban ones. This has led to a substantial increase in the quantity and diversity of waste products, produced in the urban area. This waste material, generally solid in nature, popularly termed as municipal solid waste, consists of heterogeneous mass of discarded materials such as bottles, plastic containers, plastic carry bags, cans, papers, household appliances, food packing materials, kitchen waste and several others after use from the urban community. The growth in MSW (municipal solid waste) generation in India has outpaced the growth in population in recent years. While the urban population increased about four times from 57 million in 1947 to 247 million in 1997, the solid waste generated in Indian cities increased eight times from 6 million tonnes to 48 million tonnes, during the same period. The daily per capita generation of municipal solid waste in India ranges from about 100 g in small cities to 500 g in large cities. The survey conducted by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), New Delhi puts municipal solid waste generation rates from twenty three class-I cities and class-II towns of India to be around 30,000 tonnes per day in 1997. The reason for this escalating trend is a mix of the changing lifestyles, food habits and changes in standard of living driven by higher income of the people. This is further going to be

accelerated when more than 40%, i.e. over 400 million people will be clustered in cities over the next thirty years. So, in the coming years urban India is likely to face the grave problem of disposal of massive amount of solid waste, the by-product of the rapid urbanization. There is no Indian policy document which examines waste as part of a cycle of production-consumption-recovery or perceives through a prism of overall sustainability. Waste management still is a linear system of collection and disposal, creating health and environmental hazards. Respective municipalities collect the solid waste in cities and towns and dispose it to the designated landfill sites, which is normally a low-lying area in the outskirts of a city. The choice of a disposal site is more a matter of availability than its suitability. Improper landfill sites are constant threat for water and air pollution. In future, local bodies will find difficult to get landfill sites not only because of scarcity of prime land but also due to public alertness to environmental and health hazards caused by such activity. Studies have revealed that solid waste deposited on landfill sites, causes presence of higher amount of suspended particulate matter (SPM), actinomycetes, fungi and other disease causing microbes in the surrounding atmosphere. It pollutes the water body through leaching of dissolved solid in contiguous groundwater sources. It also contributes to global warming by releasing methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. So, there is tough task for urban India for environmentally safe and sound management of huge amount of solid waste. These waste materials contain considerable amount (30-60%) of compostable matter. So, the technologies, which can process organic wastes, have to be a mainstay to any solution. The Supreme Court appointed the Burman Committee (1999), which rightly recommended that composting should be carried out in each municipality and it is now a legal requirement provided under the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Management Rules, 2000 for all municipal bodies in the country. Composting is a bio-oxidative process that decreases pathogens, eliminates unpleasant odours, and stabilizes raw organic materials. Recycling through composting is probably the easiest and most appropriate technology to deal with a majority of the waste, given its organic nature. Indirectly this also preserves the natural resources going down the drains. If the entire amount of the MSW collected in India's 400 largest cities is processed through composting, there would be production of about 5.7 million tonnes a year of organic fertilizer. This can be well applied alongwith the inorganic fertilizer in agriculture when the use of organic compost is regaining its importance after the success of green revolution driven by synthetic fertilizer is over. Thus, it can generate enormous national savings by decreasing the amount

of synthetic fertilizer, needed as well as will clean urban India and at the same time will make agriculture sustainable. The cost of waste disposal would be avoided, environmental pollution would be reduced, and the word "waste" in this context would become redundant. However, we should look for the management at the root of this problem, i.e. the higher rate of waste generation. The production of waste should be reduced. It needs the attitude of the urban India to be changed towards consumption pattern. Consumption should be need based not on the basis of purchasing power. Todays use and throw culture should be checked. The polluter should pay for the pollution contributed by him. So, the need of the hour is that the educated and well-to-do persons should come forward to rectify some of their lifestyle for betterment of our mother earth and the example set by them, will be propagated towards the other sections of the society to safeguard the environment.