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Indian municipal garbage: How to manage it?
By Gopal Krishna
Published in toxicslink.org, 19/07/2005
In India, under the ‘business as usual’
scenario, the total municipal solid waste management (MSW) generation
within the next five decades would multiply five times the present level
of about 50 million tonnes per day.
Against such a backdrop, issues ranging from centralised
waste management, decentralised waste management, regional waste management,
resource generation and recovery, sanitary landfill to carbon credits
for MSW projects were debated at a national workshop on Municipal
Solid Waste Management (MSW): Sharing of experiences and lessons learnt,
organised on July 13 and 14, 2005.
The workshop was co-sponsored by Housing and Urban
Development Corporation (HUDCO), Union Ministry of Urban Development &
Poverty Alleviation USAEP, Water Sanitation Program (World Bank) and was
held at India International Centre (IIC) Annexure, New Delhi. International
Solid Waste Association (ISWA) and Solid Waste Association of North America
(SWANA) also supported this workshop.
Finance and consultancy for waste management was the
central theme of the workshop in the context of increasing population,
consumerism, resource constraints and the directions from the Indian Supreme
Court and the High Courts.
Perhaps taking note of the fact that the current waste
management practices adversely affect human habitat, panelists such as
N.C. Vasuki, President of International Solid Waste Association (ISWA)
and CEO, Delaware Solid Waste Authority, USA, P.U. Asnani, USAEP and others
shared their wisdom on waste management.
Vasuki said India and China are biggest dioxins emitters.
Therefore, before embarking on incinerator projects in India, there must
be proper pollution control and regulation in place. He is an ardent advocate
of thermal treatment process for waste management. He is known for misleading
people with his talk of multiple benefits by using thermal technologies,
which according to him leads to reduction in landfill volume, energy recovery
by displacing fossil fuels, recovery of metals, and some reduction in
global-warming gases. These claims of Vasuki are factually incorrect.
He refers to European waste policy as non-pragmatic
and is generally dismissive about "Polluter Pays” principle.
He makes fun of this policy, which makes the companies that manufacture,
and sell products as the "polluters," not the "consumers"
who purchase the products and the EU decree that polluters should pay
to collect and recycle all the packaging materials. He feels something
is wrong with EU system of thought insisting that placing organics in
landfills was not acceptable and its directive about landfilling of materials
containing more than 5% carbon would not be allowed after 2005.
Vasuki will have the Indian policy-makers and citizens
believe that the American waste policy is more pragmatic and less dependent
on the government.
Asnani who was introduced as the Patron, Municipal
Solid Waste Association of India, advocates pelletisation and seems convinced
about its appropriateness. He has articulated his views on it at a seminar
on ‘Urban waste management -- Options for future’ which was
organised by Consultancy Development Centre (CDC) and Sycom Consultancy
Services and sponsored by Thermax, Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy
Sources (MNES) and Global Trust Bank. Asnani is a member, Technology Advisory
Group (TAG), Union Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India.
He has divided the country into three parts for SWM solutions:
- Cities with population of 1 million: According to
him, these can go for state-of-the-art technology provided it is approved
by the TAG.
- Corporations and municipalities with a population
of 1/2 million: These should go for simplest technology.
- Nagar Panchayats: These should go for simplest technology.
At the HUDCO workshop on July 13, the session on ‘Providing
nation-wide infrastructure for SWM’ was chaired by Dr Indrani Chndrasekharan,
Director, Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF). The panelists
were P.U. Asnani, United States–Asia Environment Partnership (USAEP)
{USAID}, Dr A.B. Akolkar, Additional Director, Central Pollution Control
Board (CPCB) and member, Supreme Court Committee on Waste to Energy, H.
Lanier Hickman, former Executive Director, Solid Waste Association of
North America (SWANA), USA.
Hickman. who is a long time advocate of waste to energy.
is the author of books like American Alchemy: The History of Solid Waste
Management in the United States and Principles of Integrated Solid Waste
Management. He said, “I do not agree with the statement that Indian
waste is different. Trash everywhere is trash and if it can be managed
at other places it can be managed here.” When it was pointed out
to him that all the reports from government and the statistics about waste
composition in India showed that Indian waste has low calorific value
which led to the failure of the Timarpur waste to energy plant, he had
no answers. Hickman suggested top-down public policy for waste management.
When the report ‘Resources up in Flames’
of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), Washington was cited
to respond to his support for incinerators, Hickman agreed that for last
15 years there has been no new incinerator in the USA but the old ones
are functioning efficiently with pollution control equipment.
The session on “Initiatives in Indian mega metro
cities” had panelists like Ravi Dass, Director-in-Chief, Conservation
& Sanitation Engineering Department, Municipal Corporation of Delhi
(MCD), Subhash Chandra, Special Commissioner, Bangalore Mahanagar Palike,
Anil Mukim, Municipal Commissioner, Ahmedabad, Pankaj Joshi, Municipal
Commissioner, Surat, Vivek Agarwal, CDC, Jaipur and S. Dasgupta, WSP.
Dass gave an outline of how waste is being managed
in Delhi. He referred to privatisation of collection and transportation
for which agreement has been signed on January 31, 2005, with three companies
for six out of the 12 zones of MCD. Quoting Delhi Waste Master Plan Report
of 2004, he said MCD has identified processing and treatment technologies
for MSW such as composting, pelletisation and biomethanation. What he
does not mention is that in the preparation of the Delhi Waste Master
Plan Report, it did not consult any civil society group from India.
MCD has commissioned first two pilot facilities based
on Methanation and RDF with daily capacities of 50 and 100 tonnes, respectively,
through a renewed call for proposals from the private sector and rigorous
scrutiny. MCD has signed agreement with IL&FS unmindful of the environment,
health and safety of the residents of Delhi, which RDF technology will
jeopardise.
MCD is either pretending ignorance about incinerators
(including burning of RDF system) being net energy losers when the embodied
energy of the materials burned is accounted for or it has been completely
misled by some vested interests. MCD refuses to understand that recycling
of waste materials saves three to five times the amount of energy, as
incinerating these same materials would generate. For every tonne of material
destroyed by waste incineration, many more tonnes of raw materials must
be mined, extracted, processed, or distributed to manufacture new products
to take its place.
Several reports of the Government has sought exclusion
of RDF, waste pelletisation and waste incineration from qualifying as
renewable or sources of renewable energy, fuel, energy programmes, and
other related programs, regulations, legislation, and policies because
of its contaminating effect. The reports of Planning Commission and Union
Urban Development Ministry illustrate the need for non-burn technologies
like composting given the fact that we are biomass deficit.
MCD has done well to revamp the operation of MCD composting
plant in Okhla at a capacity of 200 tonnes per day (tpd). It is planning
a new composting plant with a capacity of 600 tpd. Private operators are
operating the Bhalaswa Compost plant at 500 tpd.
The operation of New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC)
compost plant is happening with 200 tpd after discussion with MCD and
NDMC. A proposal to set up a compost plant in Okhla has been put forth
to NMDC by the IL&FS. The project will be implemented through Public
Private Partnership. The plant will solve NDMC's problem of cutting down
the load from sanitary landfill sites. NDMC pays Rs 2 crore annually to
use MCD's sanitary landfill sites for disposal of garbage in its area.
MCD is providing financial and technical support for two local composting
projects implemented by Resident Welfare Associations (RWA) and NGOs at
neighborhood level.
Dass said MCD is commissioning new sanitary
landfills at Jaithpur, Narela Bawana Road and Bhatti Mines on ‘Design,
build and operate’ basis. MCD is working on the closure
of existing three landfills and development of restoration projects.
Dass misled the workshop about MCD's proposal to build
a landfill at Bhatti Mines by not informing that there is risk of contamination
of water resources from leachate emissions. Also it lies in the vicinity
of sensitive locations like Asola Wild Life sanctuary and two villages,
Sanjay Nagr and Balbir Nagar.
Dass said MCD has conducted workshops on segregation
of waste. The fact is MCD has failed to encourage 'segregation at source'
mandatory as per MSW Rules, 2000.
Dass claimed that MCD has taken initiatives to earn
carbon credits through Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of Kyoto Protocol.
It is dealing with Landfill Gas quantification from three landfill sites,
the project note has been submitted to the World Bank and feasibility
study funding approved with World Bank work started. MCD feels that trading
of carbon credits would benefit approximately Rs 400 crore in next 20
years. The private sector can set up CDM capturing facilities.
What is astounding is the fact that the when the world
over use of incineration and combustion of RDF is discouraged due to its
polluting nature, MCD is encouraging incineration technology. The claim
of carbon credits is fraudulent because waste incineration is greenhouse
gas emitter as per Kyoto Protocol and therefore it cannot qualify as a
CDM project.
Deepak Sanan of WSP chaired the session on “State
Government Initiatives”, with panelists like A.K. Jain, IAS, All
India Institute of Local Self Government (AIILSG), Ramkumar, Adviser (Environment
and Energy), Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Finance Corporation (KUIDFC),
Mahesh Singh, Joint Secretary, Urban Development, Gujarat Government.
On July 14, D.K. Mittal, CEO, Special Infrastructure
Projects, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) and
member, Supreme Court Committee on Waste to Energy with Dr A.K. Saxena,
National Productivity Council as the co-chair, chaired the session on
“Public-private Partnership and Business Opportunities”. The
panelists were Anjan Das, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) &
S.R. Maley of Excel Industries.
T. Prabhakaran, Director, Finance, HUDCO, chaired the
session on “Resource Generation and Financing”. The panelists
were Dr Vivek Kumar, The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), S.N. Jain
of MGM International, S. Mukherjee of Environment Information Centre and
IL& FS Ecosmart India Limited.
The concluding session was chaired by Dr Dilip Biswas,
former chairperson, Central Pollution Control Board and Chairman, Supreme
Court Committee on Waste to Energy. The panelists included A.K. Jain,
AIILSG, Prof Manoj Datta, N.C. Vasuki, Dr N.B. Majumdar, Dr A.K. Saxena,
H. Lanier Hickman and others.
A.K. Jain sought the attention of the participants
towards the financial reforms under way for local bodies, which would
provide fiscal power to them. Referring to examples from Gujarat, Maharashtra
and Karnataka, he stressed the need for minimisation of waste, recycling
of waste for employment generation, community contracting, micro-planning
of the city and the division of the city between large waste generators
and small waste generators. He called for use of CDM for composting.
Prof Manoj Datta sought one week training at all levels
from workers to officers on composting and waste to energy to ascertain
whether it is possible with 40-45% inert in the waste.
Majumadar referred to composting experiments in India
since 1934. He stressed the need for quality assurance and grading of
compost.
With regard to incinerators, one participant highlighted
the inconsistency between different Union Ministries because Ministry
of Non-conventional Energy Sources, MoEF and Ministry of Science and Technology
promote it while Ministry of Commerce opposes its inclusion in the WTO
list of Environmental Goods and Services.
It was pointed out to the workshop in the presence
of the Chairman, Supreme Court Committee on Waste to Energy that D.K.
Mittal is an interested party in the waste to energy project in Delhi
therefore his membership to the Supreme Court Committee on Waste to Energy
constituted by Union Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources (MNES)
raises the issue of conflict of interest.
The statement of concern with regard to burn technologies
was also made after Dr Biswas asked the workshop to be informed about
the environment and health concerns emerging from it.
Dr Biswas acknowledged that AWM and DCSE have shared
their concerns with him. He wondered as to what comes first -- the education
or legislation -- with regard to waste management. He underlined the need
for a carrot and stick policy to deal with the problem.
There is no substitute to waste minimisation, waste segregation, composting and recycling, but mere lip service to these issues was deemed sufficient.
Sadly, these are not pondered over at such workshops
with the seriousness they deserve.
For details, contact Gopal
Krishna
[Post your view on this article]
EXISTING VIEWS
| Sl.No. |
Posted By |
Date |
View |
| 1. |
Amit Jain |
24/12/2007 |
Windrow Composting is the best option for the Delhi MSW |
| 2. |
KS Dilip |
21/06/2006 |
Can Mr Gopal Krishna please advise which is the best technology to handle and manage municipal solid waste? RDF technology is bad;.landfill is bad.... What else to do to manage the waste? |
| 3. |
Chintamani Patwardhan |
28/05/2006 |
We are manufacturers of fluxes from Pune and are using waste material of thermal power plants as a source of raw materials. Industries should be encouraged in similar way to reuse the waste material. Landfilling should be the last option for waste disposal. |
| 4. |
Navin Chopra |
02/05/2006 |
I had spoken to Ravi Dass of MCD regarding decentralised composting units. The costs would be paid from the savings accrued from reduced transportation costs. His reply was that MCD does not have sufficient money. Why are people like him allowed to continue? |
[Post your view on this article] |
