Modi's Swachch Bharat initiative should herald rehaul of refuse disposal systems in our country
Two months ago, Maharashtra environment secretary
RA Rajeev lamented at a workshop that no Chief Minister or Prime
Minister had ever spoken of a litter-free country. As if on cue, Prime
Minister Narendra Modi has spoken up. And how.
Modi is the first national-level politician to take up cleanliness as
a national priority. He raised the issue first in his Independence Day
address, then on Teacher’s Day, in Bangalore and even in the US. He will
launch Mission Swachch Bharat on October 2, the birth anniversary of a
person many believe is anathema to Modi.
Never before has such stature been enjoyed by the cause of
cleanliness and sanitation -- issues that are joined at the hip and
translate into health and life at the front end. Sweeping has always
been a lowly chore in India, steadfastly so because of its
unattractiveness as a vote-getting cause.
The solid waste problem in India is immense. Given our resilient yen
for littering and high tolerance for squalor, Modi’s emphatic focus on
garbage removal is not just necessary but essential. If we do manage to
achieve the seemingly impossible target of garbage clearance at the
street and the doorstep, we would have covered the first -- and biggest
in terms of its scale -- stage of the waste conundrum.
There is much more to waste management than collection and dumping.
Without going into the different types of waste or their hazard
potential, the obvious steps in an integrated approach towards a more
civilised and sustainable waste disposal system are reduction of waste,
segregation of waste at source, local composting, treatment, recycling
and re-use. Only the waste left over at the end of this chain should be
incinerated, with an energy conversion component built in if feasible.
Landfilling should be the absolute last option for non-recoverable
waste, and when inevitable, it should be done in a sanitary way, not in
open landfills. Incidentally, Japan has an island, Odaiba, constructed
over a landfill site in Tokyo Bay.
In India, waste management has not evolved as a sector. A PIL by
Almitra Patel against open dumping of waste in 1996 led to the drafting
of rules by a Supreme Court-appointed committee to provide a legal
framework for a range of activities such as generation, storage,
collection, transportations, processing and disposal into a sanitary
landfill, etc.
A detailed report by a technical advisory group set up by the government dwells
on processing and disposal, cost-effective solutions, etc. Yet, most
efforts at composting and treatment are individual and informal. India
has waste-to-energy plants and recycling factories, many of which
recycle waste from countries like Nepal and Bhutan. We also have some
exemplary showcases. Suryapet in Telangana is India’s first
waste-complaint city with zero garbage. Namakkal, a district town in
Tamil Nadu, has privatised its waste management systems, enforces
door-to-door collection with source segregation, vermi-composting of
organic garbage and sale of recyclables. But what is needed is a macro
overhaul enhancing, integrating, and streamlining all the cogs in the
wheel.
To work our way up from segregation to re-use, an architectural
framework comprising the government/local bodies, private sector and/or
public-private partnership, NGOs and public needs to be put in place.
Local municipalities can coerce compliance through a string of laws and
levies on the creation and collection of waste such as a landfill tax,
capping per capita waste generation, penalising certain types of
inorganic waste.
Countries not just in the developed West but even in our
neighbourhood have seamlessly moved to a system of waste reduction.
Dhaka slums have taken to open-air barrel composting and collect $20 per
ton carbon credits. Singapore, which faces land scarcity like most of
urban India, has a recycling rate of over 60 %. In particular, its
near-complete recycling of construction debris holds out hope for a
rapidly urbanising country like ours.
Singapore’s charges for waste disposal disincentivise generation by construction companies.
European Union countries have done better than most in this area. The
European waste hierarchy has five steps: prevention, reuse, recycle,
energy recovery and disposal. Its directives include the principles of
‘polluter pays’ and ‘extended producer responsibility’.
Sweden, which came together as a nation for waste management, sees
waste as a resource and not as a problem. Almost half of its waste goes
into incineration with energy recovery. A world leader in food waste
treatment, its food waste is separated and treated to recover biogas and
bio-fertiliser. Sweden’s landfilling shrunk from 62 % in 1975 to just
1% a year ago. Measures such as landfill tax, ban on dumping combustible
and organic waste, energy tax to make waste-derived energy more
attractive, and lowering of taxes on use of bio-fuels drove the change.
On the other hand, the Flemish region of Belgium, Flanders,
discourages incineration except for waste that cannot be controlled or
prevented. It has one of the best programmes of waste mitigation and
recycling. It recycles and re-uses three-fourths of its household waste
while discouraging incineration. From about five decades ago when open
dumping was common, it has closed most dumping sites.
Landfill and incineration restrictions were introduced in 1998. Half
of its population today is into home composting. The Flanders waste
management agency, OVAM, has developed a tool, Ecolizer, to help an
enterpreneur work out the environmental burden of a product from design,
make, processing, energy use, transport and recycling, thereby enabling
a suitable change in its design. The cost of recycling is integrated
into the product price.
Not technology or economy but a mix of factors woven into the administrative vision, coupled with public will, can deliver the progression to zero waste.
Modi has taken the first giant step by lending his considerable
weight to the issue. It’s a good beginning. On our part, we will have to
retrain ourselves to understand that waste management is not the
exclusive domain of civic authorities. We are equal stakeholders and
should do what we can right away -- reduce, segregate, re-use and
compost at home. The author is a senior journalist based in Mumbai
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