Waste Management in India, Current Policies, Regulations, and Challenges

Context

Over the past few years, waste management has seen a paradigm shift in policies and perspectives. Waste is no longer something to discard instantly but a reservoir of resources, given all the materials to be recovered for reuse.

About Waste & Waste Management

Waste is unwanted or unusable materials. It is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use.

• Solid Wastes: These are unwanted or useless solid materials generated from human activities in residential, industrial or commercial areas. 
  • Classification: It may be categorized in three following ways:
    • Origin: Domestic, industrial, commercial, construction or institutional
    • Contents: Organic material, glass, metal, plastic paper etc
    • Hazard Potential: Toxic, non-toxin, flammable, radioactive, infectious etc
  • Solid Waste Management: It reduces or eliminates the adverse impact on the environment & human health. 
    • A number of processes are involved in effectively managing waste for a municipality. These include monitoring, collection, transport, processing, recycling and disposal. 
• Liquid Wastes: These wastes are generated from washing, flushing or manufacturing processes of industries.
• Gaseous Wastes: These are the wastes that are released in the form of gases from automobiles, factories or burning of fossil fuels like petroleum. 
  • They get mixed in the other gases’ atmosphere and occasionally cause events such as smog and acid rain.
• Sustainable Waste Management: It relies on the waste management hierarchy, a system that focuses on avoidance, reduction, reuse, recycling, energy recovery, and finally, treatment or disposal.

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Difference in Current Policies from Traditional Waste Management Practices

Traditional System: The last 150 years have seen informal workers in the waste management sector, commonly known as kabaadiwalas, creating and following best practices such as sorting and segregating waste, trading it at various levels and even recycling plastic and paper. 

Concerns Related to the Traditional Waste Management Practices

• Insufficient Income: This method is not sustainable because their insufficient income limits their ability to scale up and adopt the modern structure, systems and technology needed for the task. 

• The current operations of informal kabaadiwala aggregators (now known as ‘swachhata warriors’) struggle to meet operational costs as they are dependent on a single stream of revenue- selling the waste.
• Rampant Exploitation: Also, there is rampant exploitation of informal sector workers; their working conditions are often hazardous, especially in the context of toxic waste. 
• Current Dismal Situation: As per a report by The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), India generates over 62 million tonnes of waste in a year.
  • Of this, only 43 million tonnes of total waste generated gets collected, 12 million tonnes is treated before disposal and the rest is simply discarded in waste yards.
  • Responsibility: The responsibility for institutionalizing waste management in India lies not just with governance bodies but, importantly, with waste generators, i.e. citizens and businesses.

Regulations of Waste Management in India

Institutional Arrangement: In India, waste management is governed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) and the ULBs (12th Schedule of the Constitution).

• Responsibility of Local Bodies: Under the 74th Constitutional Amendment, Disposal and management of Municipal Solid Waste is one of the 18 functional domains of the Municipal Corporations and Nagar Panchayats. 
• A Fundamental Duty: Article 51 A (g) of the Indian Constitution that deals with fundamental duties states that every citizen of India should protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers, and wildlife, and to have compassion for living creatures.
• Solid Waste Management (SWM) is a state subject and it is the responsibility of the state government to ensure appropriate solid waste management practices.

Basis of Management: 

In India, rules regarding the management of waste are based on the ideas of “sustainable development,” “precaution,” and “polluter pays.”

• These principles require cities and businesses to act responsibly and take care of the environment, fixing any harm they cause. There are laws to regulate how waste is handled under the Environment Protection Act of 1986.
  • The ‘polluter pays’ principle states that whoever produces pollution should bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health or the environment.

Various Rules & Regulations for Waste Management: 

• Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Mechanism: EPR makes producers responsible for the entire lifecycle of their products, including their collection, recycling, and disposal.
  • It aims to reduce the environmental impact of products by shifting the financial and physical burden of waste management from governments and taxpayers to producers.
  • In 2022, EPR initiatives were implemented for plastic packaging, E-waste, battery waste, and used oil. 
• Solid Waste Management Rules 2016: It replaced the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000 and focused on segregation of waste at source, responsibility on the manufacturer to dispose of sanitary and packaging wastes, user fees for collection, disposal and processing from the bulk generator.
• Plastic Waste Management (PWM) Rules, 2016: It mandates the generators of plastic waste to take steps to minimize generation of plastic waste, prevent littering of plastic waste, and ensure segregated storage of waste at source among other measures.
  • In February 2022, Plastic Waste Management (Amendment) Rules, 2022 were notified.
• Plastic Waste Management (Amendment) Rules, 2022: It specifies the responsibilities of various stakeholders in ensuring that plastic waste is managed properly and does not end up polluting the environment.
• Zero Waste Policy: India’s current policy framework aims to eliminate landfills or have less than 10% of waste going into these. 
  • This forms the basis of ‘zero waste’ policies that are part of the Solid Waste Management Rules in India. 
  • Need: To achieve positive results on ‘zero waste’ policies, India will need to introduce a holistic system, including collection of segregated waste, followed closely by further sorting into multiple categories, the aggregation of each category, and finally its dispatch to various recyclers. 
  • Significance: If this process is followed meticulously across the country, we will have a system calibrated for maximum resource recovery, with 95% of the waste sent for processing and just 5% put into a landfill.

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Initiatives Related to Waste Management in India

• Swachh Bharat Mission for Solid Waste Management: Central assistance is provided under Swachh Bharat Mission for solid waste management including plastic waste management in urban and rural areas.
• Swaccha Survekshan: It is an annual survey of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation in cities and towns across India. 
• Swachhata Hi Sewa Campaign: It has been launched for ensuring cleanliness through the various stakeholders’ engagement in the “Jan Andolan” (National Movement).
• Compost Banao, Compost Apnao Campaign: It aims to encourage people to convert their kitchen waste into compost to be used as fertilizer and to reduce the amount of waste getting to landfill sites.
• Project REPLAN: It aims to make carry bags by mixing processed and treated plastic waste with cotton fibre rags in the ratio 20:80.
• Waste to Wealth Portal: It aims to identify, develop, and deploy technologies to treat waste to generate energy, recycle materials, and extract resources of value.
• Waste to Energy: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) launched it to convert municipal and industrial solid waste into electricity and/or heat for industrial processing.
• Waste to Wealth Mission: It is the scientific mission of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council (PMSTIAC).
  • It aims to identify, develop, and deploy technologies to treat waste to generate energy, recycle materials, and extract resources of value.
  • The ‘Waste-to-Energy’ and Waste Management market in India is set to be a $14bn opportunity by the year 2025.

Challenges Faced in Waste Management in India

• Rising Waste Generation: Rapidly expanding population and economic growth leads to increase in waste generation consequent to rise in consumption and expansion of digital economy leads to increase in e-waste generation.
  • As per a Planning Commission Report of 2014, India will generate 165 million tonnes by 2030.
• Inappropriate Management: In India, the informal sector plays a significant role in extracting value from waste, but faces challenges due to mismanagement.
  • Sorting recyclable materials is also a problem, only about 30% of waste is properly sorted, leading valuable materials like aluminum to end up in landfills instead of being recycled.
• Rapid Urbanization: In India, there are huge urban areas with 377 million people generate about 62 million tons of solid waste every year. However, only 43 million tons are collected, and the rest ends up untreated or in landfills.
  • E-waste is another significant concern with a progressive rise.
• Inadequate Infrastructure & Lack of Financial Resources: India faces lack of adequate garbage collection infrastructure, evident from the only 21 million garbage collectors.
  • Lack of financial resources with local bodies lead to understaffed and underpaid cleaning and sanitation departments. 
• Lack of Responsibility: Limited environmental awareness along with low motivation has an impact on innovation. Inappropriate public attitudes to waste are also a major barrier to improving waste management in India.

Way Forward to Waste Management in India

• Infrastructure & Technology: 
  • Appropriate Infrastructure: A sustainable waste management system needs appropriate infrastructure in the form of collection and sorting centres and material recovery facilities, apart from wet waste processing and dry waste recycling facilities. 
  • Detailed Processes: It needs very detailed processes to operate the facilities, manage logistics and capture data. 
  • Technology: It also needs technology to track and trace waste and ultimately ensure the recycling of all that can be recycled.
    • It is desirable to integrate technology like RFID-enabled monitoring and GPS tracking that can also help in efficient waste management.
      • Real-time Monitoring and Visibility: RFID enables real-time monitoring of personnel movements, allowing supervisors and managers to make informed decisions based on up-to-date information.
  • Focus on Organic Waste: Treating organic waste through composting and bio-methanation can reduce the amount going to landfills and can convert organic waste into fuel, which is beneficial.
    • The concept of common waste treatment facilities is being promoted, involving public-private partnerships. India needs to ensure proper treatment facilities for biomedical and hazardous waste.
• An Integrated Roadmap: There is a need to adopt a business model focused on the environmental as well as social impact of waste management, meaning to achieve a balance of ‘people, planet and profits.’ 
  • Transformation: With proper practices and systems in place, the model should also integrate the informal sector and provide a roadmap for transformation.
  • Twin Revenue System: Such a business model could rely on a twin revenue system- a service fee that users are charged plus revenues from waste sales. 
  • These two revenue streams could cover the operational costs of an enterprise in the waste sector. 
• Strict Implementation of Rules & Regulations: Strictly implementing waste management rules, especially the “Polluter Pays Principle,” is crucial.
• Raise Awareness: There is a need to educate people through community organizations and self-help groups about separating waste, recycling, and composting to make the process more effective and sustainable.
  • Research and development can encourage technology-driven recycling at the university and school level to promote active participation in waste management.
• Individual’s Responsibility: Waste is everybody’s responsibility. A waste reduction strategy can be incorporated by each of us whether at home or at work by following the 4 R’s principle- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recovery or reclaim.

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Conclusion

Waste management stands as a critical pillar in ensuring a clean and healthy environment for all. Waste, once considered a mere byproduct, has now become a pressing challenge, demanding innovative solutions and comprehensive strategies to address its impact on human health and the environment.

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