Whatever our aspirations for Mumbai, we already have one dubious claim to fame: our biggest landfill, at Deonar, features in Waste Atlas 2014, a record of the world’s 50 biggest dumpsites.
The ‘honour’ has been long in the making. We generate over 9,400 tonnes of waste every day. (That is the figure in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s Environment Status Report, 2016-2017; unofficial figures peg it at over 10,000t]. Approximately 3,200t goes to Deonar alone, with the rest going to two other dumps, in Mulund and Kanjurmarg. As per the ESR, 73% of Mumbai’s garbage is biodegradable food waste, which can easily be composted. The rest? Wood, cloth (organic — dry): 3%; sand, stone and fine earth: 17%; plastic: 3%; paper and recyclables (including metals): 4%.
Environmentalists have long said that it is critical we segregate waste at source; i.e., in our homes. And now the BMC is going to enforce that.
Between January and June, the civic body issued notices to over 23,000 societies that did not segregate dry and wet waste. And in June, it announced that it would be making it mandatory, from October 2, for housing societies to segregate their waste. Bulk generators — those whose premises are larger than 20,000 sq.m. and/or who produce more than 100 kilos of wet waste a day — will have to compost their wet waste and only give the dry waste to the garbage collectors. For smaller entities, the BMC will collect wet and dry waste separately. If they do not comply, the BMC said, it will stop collecting dry waste from them.
After a good deal of protest and confusion over meeting the deadline, the BMC has decided to amend the circular, and societies now have a three-month window to submit a waste management plan.
Are we prepared to meet the segregation and composting challenge? Not quite. There is a lack of will on the part of both citizens and the BMC, say activists. Long-ingrained behaviours and mindsets need to be changed, there are logistics and space issues and, almost overnight, people need to learn about composting and how to deal with non-biodegradable materials.
Bhagyashree Kelkar, social activist and the longest-serving member of Citizen’s Forum G/North (CFGN), an Area Locality Management (ALM) group, has long been promoting solid waste management in her neighbourhood in Mahim. In fact the very concept of ALMs, she says, was born from the intent of dealing with garbage: In the 1990s, citizens in Joshi Lane, Ghatkopar, were fed up of complaining about litter; they got proactive about it, and the first ALM took root in the N ward.
“At our society, we started segregating and composting over a decade ago,” Ms. Kelkar says. “It was largely a matter of educating people and breaking mental barriers.” It started with the basics: society meetings to help members understand exactly what wet and dry waste meant. They engaged an NGO to segregate, compost and clean the building: “Giving them the entire contract, inclusive of cleaning, led to cost-efficiency.” Some complained that their domestic help wouldn’t obey instructions, “But we had to make home-owners take responsibility, sometimes with fear of repercussions.” Ms. Kelkar thinks the BMC should have gotten strict long ago. “For many years, we have been suggesting that MCGM penalise people for littering, and for not segregating waste at source.”
Often, private efforts to promote segregation are negated by the BMC collecting it all in one van; this sees citizens losing enthusiasm. Chhaya Sabnis, another member of CFGN, bears witness to this. Several months ago, she started segregating wet and dry garbage at home. For a few months, separate vans collecting wet and dry garbage visited her lane. But this was short-lived: soon, only one van came by. Segregating seemed pointless. “It was a pity,” she says, “because just as I had convinced my neighbours to separate the trash, it was being lumped together.” Ms. Kelkar agrees. “It would be nice if initially BMC could send separate vans for wet and dry waste collection daily. Most people are averse to keeping even dry waste in their homes. Once mindsets change, the BMC can send the dry van every two days.”
Ms. Sabnis also had trouble with her dry refuse: the local raddiwala refused to collect sweet and biscuit wrappers, plastic bottles, tetra packs, and other such items. But Ms. Sabnis continues segregating within her home, despite many of her neighbours having given up.
Ms. Kelkar stresses that the onus lies with the citizen: “We want to keep our homes clean, but not our country. We still litter fearlessly, and many refuse to segregate unless fined. Today we are facing this situation largely because of a lack of will on citizens’ and the authorities’ part.” Indrani Malkani, Managing Trustee, V Citizens Action Network Group, and secretary of the Little Gibbs Road ALM, says we owe it to our city to start a new habit. “As a member of civil society, we have some civic responsibilities,” she says. “We can segregate our waste on our own and help our city’s garbage reduction. It is not fair to depend upon BMC for each and everything when we are the one creating waste every day.”
Ms. Kelkar, however, doesn’t believe composting should be mandatory, because it is not viable for people with small homes. “When I visited slum dwellers to spread awareness on composting, we found that there were several practical problems: they feared rats would enter their homes.” She thinks it would be more practical to start with making segregation compulsory only for pukka housing. She suggests demarcated areas in municipal school grounds for composting units, which municipal vans can transport wet garbage to, and composting bins in pedestrian refuge islands where area residents can dump their wet waste. This would also help curb illegal dumping around trees, street corners, and gutters.
Tasneem Shukul, president of the Pandurang Naik Marg Residents Association in G/North Ward, says illegal dumping contributed to the clogged drains that exacerbated the August 29 deluge. “We need to collectively take responsibility to prevent such situations from arising,” she says. In 2015, Ms. Shukul went door to door, educating her neighbourhood on segregation. Out of 10 societies in the lane, the ALM has brought eight on board.
There were challenges to overcome. People didn’t — many still don’t — understand what wet and dry garbage meant exactly. And they didn’t want to collect dry garbage at home — some considered it inauspicious — and it would only be picked up by the BMC twice a week. “So each building equipped themselves with two bins, one for wet, another for dry garbage.” The lane leads to the Dadar beach, and is also home to a wadi of huts. “We tried to convince them to segregate but they cited a lack of space.” Eventually a solution was reached: a separate bin was created for the wadi, where both wet and dry waste is clubbed together. The bin helps protect the beach from trash.” One building didn’t join in because of an issue many Mumbaikars identify with: “It is a five-storey building, with no elevator. The cleaner finds it difficult to go up the steps with two separate bins.”
Within her own building, Ms. Shukul went a step further, promoting composting. It was easy, she says, — “we are a small tenanted structure and everyone was agreeable” — but it may not be feasible for everyone. “Segregation must be made compulsory for everyone; composting can be enforced later.”
With all her experience and enthusiasm, even Ms. Shukul is flummoxed at how to classify some waste: “What can one do with an empty sachet of ketchup? These are neither strictly wet nor dry.” She is left with no alternative but to club it with dry waste, which lands up in a dump yard. What about used feminine hygiene products and diapers? Many sanitary napkin brands use materials including plastic; one pad can take from 500 to 800 years to decompose.
Stalin D., who runs Vanashakti, an environment NGO, is also against the diktat on composting and quotes the current law in support: the Solid Waste Management Rules of 2016 only mandate segregation. “Citizens must not be forced to compost, not even in large societies. That is the job of the corporation.” Instead, he says, the powers-that-be must “ban what cannot be composted,” such as all plastic bags, not just the 50-micron ones, and strictly enforce the law.
Rajkumar Sharma, of Almanac, a federation of ALMs across the M-West and M-East wards agrees: “The corporation is shifting their responsibility to the citizens; segregation is compulsory by law, not composting.”
Mr. Sharma had filed a public interest litigation to enforce waste processing at Deonar, and is part of the Bombay High Court monitoring committee that regulates dumping activities there. “Further to the strong stand taken by the court, illegal dumping at Deonar has been controlled.”
But Mr. Sharma, like many others who understand the deeper issues, worries about the long-term plans for waste management. Is the BMC really thinking things through?
