The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on Tuesday launched a forum of 20 cities that have adopted or are willing to adopt waste segregation and management practices. The forum included the South and East Delhi Municipal Corporation and the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) in their list.
After the launch, a discussion was organised with the stakeholders to discuss how each of these cities are segregating waste and how these cities are engaging the citizens and the government to achieve the target of 100% source segregation.
Sustainable model
Apart from SDMC, EDMC and NDMC in Delhi, municipal bodies of 20 cities (across 13 States) like Bangalore, Patna, Gurugram, Gangtok, Greater Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Balaghat also participated in the forum discussion.
“From collection to disposal of waste, cities are struggling to implement an affordable and sustainable model. On the other hand, the amount of waste generated is increasing every day,” said Sunita Narain, director general, CSE.
She added that urban India alone generates a gigantic 1.5 lakh metric tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) every day — this quantity goes up by 5% every year.
The CSE said that over 25 cities that have started the practices of waste segregation were surveyed and its practices were studied, out of which 20 were finally selected in the forum. They said that a few cities, which have not started segregation but are interested in adopting it as a system, have also been included in the list.
More cities soon
“The idea is to hand hold these cities’ municipal bodies and guide them towards waste segregation and management. These cities can become examples for the rest of the country to follow. A model framework has been created and the guidelines will be implemented along with them based on their financial and geographic conditions,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general, CSE.
The CSE said that though the project has been started with these 20 cities, more cities will be added to this in the coming months.
“Several municipalities had shown interest but could not participate in this forum because of the Swachh Sarvekshan, which is due next month. More cities such as Pune and Navi Mumbai have shown interest and might join the club,” said an organiser.
Country-wide campaign
On June 5 this year, the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs had kickstarted a country-wide campaign to segregate waste at the source. However, ensuring segregation at source requires infrastructure for transportation, processing and to go through the tough compliance systems, the CSE’s forum will help cities sail t hrough these hurdles, they said.
