Mumbai’s biggest landfill at Deonar, nearly 55 metres high, is a mountain of waste. The smoke from a fire that broke out there in January 2016 could be seen from space, and covered a large part of the city in smog. Near the fire, 74 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) schools shut for two days.
A year since the incident, the city’s administration has done nothing to reduce the size of that hill of garbage or think about closing the dump down. And we are not prepared for another such eventuality. All our waste that ends up in the city’s dumps is unsegregated at source and unprocessed: plastic, glass, paper, metal waste and construction debris along with kitchen waste. It is a toxic and flammable mix.
The BMC says Mumbai generates approximately 8,600 metric tonnes (MT) of municipal solid waste every day. Some estimates peg it closer to 10,000 MT, others at far less. Waste from across the city is taken in trucks to the Deonar — which has been in use for over 90 years — and two other dumps, at Mulund and Kanjurmarg. According to Vijay Balamwar, Deputy Municipal Commissioner, Solid Waste Management Department, nearly 3,000 MT go to Deonar, 2,500 MT to Mulund, and 3,000 MT are scientifically processed in a bioreactor at Kanjurmarg. In February 2016, the Bombay High Court said the BMC will not be allowed to dump any more waste at Deonar and Mulund from June 30 this year, but clearly, there don’t seem to be alternatives in place. The HC also appointed a six-member committee to ensure there were no more fires.
The mandate is in place (see box, ‘Segregation on paper’), but do we have the facilities for collection and scientific processing of our waste? And is our corporation taking hard measures to tackle the problem?
Environmental activists don’t think so. “All they’re doing is picking up and dumping waste. Processing is zero,” says D Stalin, conservationist. Adds activist Rishi Aggarwal, “The dump is the outward manifestation of the mess in the administration.”
Coping with the load
The BMC, though, says it has a plan in place. “We are not [yet] scientifically processing waste at Deonar, but tenders have been invited for a waste-to-energy plant that can process 3,000 metric tonnes per day,” says Mr. Balamwar. The BMC is also open to various technologies. “We have issued the tenders. It is now up to companies to participate. All this will take care of our capacity to process daily garbage.”
There is also a short-term plan to expand the capacity of the Kanjurmarg plant by March, so it can accommodate the Mulund garbage. The plan includes increasing composting facilities by 1,000 MT and another 1,000 MT in the bioreactor by March this year, over and above the 3,000 MT it already handles. In addition, the BMC is waiting to claim possession of a little over 32 hectares that the state government has given it in Mulund, near the Airoli bridge, and another 2,000 MT will go to a construction debris recycling plant that has been planned, Mr. Balamwar says.
Not everyone is convinced; these might just be addressing surface-level issues. For Mumbai to be free of its garbage mountains, solutions need to go far deeper.
Dr. Rakesh Kumar, Director, National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) who is on the HC committee, says it is important for the city to have a long-term waste management plan. “If, for instance, the Kanjurmarg landfill has to accommodate up to 6,000 metric tonnes some day; can it bear the load?” Among the suggestions NEERI had made to the BMC at the time of the Deonar fire: create a plastic waste recycling plant, look at pockets where there were frequent fires and install methane-venting systems, create terracing to prevent rain water from coming in. Mr. Kumar said he isn’t sure how many of these have been implemented.
Problems with collection
Garbage segregation, to environmentalists, is a no-brainer, a starting point for waste management. However, very few housing societies in Mumbai segregate their waste. “Segregation is 75 per cent of the battle won,” says Mr. Aggarwal.
In a circular issued in February 2013, the BMC said it would fine those who did not undertake 100 per cent door-to-door segregation and collection of waste. The punishment for repeated non-compliance could even result in imprisonment. But this fine is rarely imposed.
The biggest violators, according to Mr. Aggarwal, are the BMC’s nearly 536 junior ‘last-mile’ officials. “They are not supposed to accept mixed waste; they need to serve notices then and there. If they do that, people will segregate at source within a maximum of six months.” He says the BMC should crack down on every building that doesn’t segregate its waste. It could also use film stars to promote the cause, and award zero-waste buildings, displaying names of winners on its website. Societies that segregate their waste can also be given a property tax rebate, he says. “Source segregation is soul-satisfying: that is the message that has to go out from the municipal corporation.”
Seema Redkar, former Officer on Special Duty at the BMC, however, pins the blame one step earlier: on Mumbai’s citizens. “If you segregate waste at source, the corporation has no choice but to collect it that way.” In her own housing
society, she says, barely one or two families segregate their waste while she has been doing it for the past 16 years. “I can’t convince people in my society, because waste is still seen as ‘dirty.’”
Decentralised waste collection and management and recycling are key, and small industries, particularly, need to have a different system of dry waste collection. At times, all it needs is some out-of-the-bin thinking. In Khotwadi, Santacruz, for instance, where a row of small-scale garment manufacturers generate chindi, or scraps of leftover cloth, Ms. Redkar’s Advanced Locality Management group (ALM) used to handle three large containers a day of this waste. The ALM tried an experiment: they put up a notice in the area’s men’s public toilet saying the ALM had arranged buyers for the chindi who would come on a particular day and time. “The first time we put up the notice, 18 manufacturers turned up. Over time, the volume [of chindi the ALM now deals with] has reduced to one, sometimes, even half a container.”
In the past few months, the BMC says it has “strongly initiated” decentralised processing of waste at source as per a State government direction. It has 32 ‘garbage recovery’ or dry waste segregation centres, which it plans to take up to 67 by March-end. By March 2018, this will go up to nearly 90, says Mr. Balamwar. Also, any plot being developed on more than 2,000 sq.m, will now be required to have a wet waste composting facility. And the BMC is planning decentralised biomethanisation of wet waste generated by hotels, canteens and kitchens.
Rather than penalise non-segregation, Mr. Balamwar says, the BMC is encouraging segregation. “Processing will be done as per the nature of garbage at source, through more recovery centres, and separate collection of dry and wet waste. Once people see these in action, they will not hesitate to segregate their waste.”
Rajkumar Sharma, President of the Advanced Locality Management and Networking Action Committee (ALMANAC), an ALM federation, is not convinced these are serious measures. “90 centres in 24 wards? Really?” he says. Also, “how many units of electricity have these so-called bioreactors produced? And what is their debris policy?” He asks if waste to energy plants can handle up to 3,000 tonnes a day, given that no plant has capacity more than a few 100 MT, and that such plants have not succeeded anywhere in India.
More proof of the BMC’s lack of intent is, Mr. Sharma says, that almost a year after the big fire, nothing has changed in Deonar, “except that a large portion of the boundary wall has been repaired,” and some parts now have a barbed wire fence. “Their work has been limited to some good paperwork: sending notices to societies and circulars to staff, arranging for meetings. These notices have become a joke: people say, ‘Oh, another one’, and the BMC says they aren’t cooperating.”
The problem with treatment
“We’re not able to treat even 1 per cent of our total waste,” says Dr. S.R. Maley, scientist and expert in the area of solid waste management. The easiest way to treat waste, Dr. Maley says, is to sanitise it with bioculture and then composting, a process known as bio-mining.
The method involves spraying loosened layers of waste with composting bio-cultures, and forming ‘windrows’ — long, narrow heaps that permit air passage — so the waste gets aerated. It is then sterilised and sent for composting. Not only is it a quick, environment-friendly measure to remedy waste dumps — importantly, it prevents the generation of methane — it is also cost-effective: for 1 MT of waste, you need just 1 kg of bio-culture, which costs about ₹50. Former Additional Municipal Commissioner R.A. Rajeev, who was responsible for the closure of the Gorai landfill in 2008, suggests going in for a mix of technologies, and creating a separate department dealing with solid waste management, insulated from political
decision-making. “Waste processing requires a professional job. The corporation does not have much expertise to handle processing plants, so it needs to bring in a private player with such expertise.” Public private participation models are difficult to adopt, because these have a 25- to 30-year vision, whereas municipal corporations are elected for only five years. “This causes operators a lot of trouble.”
Mr. Rajeev also suggests “working backwards.” 100-per cent-scientific waste-treatment facilities will incentivise city administrations to create less waste: “Because that way, the municipal corporation has to pay the processor of waste and will therefore try and reduce the quantity of waste it is sending to the processor. Data worldwide shows that where you have a 100 per cent facility, in those cities people have gradually achieved 100 per cent segregation at source.”
A further incentive, Mr. Rajeev says, is that land prices will go up. “The day you improve the Deonar situation, close it, and have a scientific processing plant there, you can redevelop all of Govandi.”
Another kind of decay
When there are large contracts up for the taking, the possibility of corruption increases. At least 306 municipal and 677 private garbage compactor vehicles collect waste and make 1,396 trips to the dumps each day. The BMC’s policy of awarding centralised contracts to private companies running compactor trucks and paying a tipping fee to private contractors for every tonne of waste coming to the landfill has also come in for criticism. Mr. Aggarwal is blunt: “There are three or four big politicians raking in ₹300–400 crore in transport management contracts. If every building in Mumbai becomes zero-waste, what will they give to truck companies? They don’t care if Deonar burns.”
Mr. Stalin agrees. “Waste is the biggest cash cow for every political party.” He contests the BMC’s waste generation figure, and says it is in the 6,500 to 7,000 MT range. “We have asked for a ward-wise audit of waste, stage-wise (ward to landfill) records, but haven’t been given access to them.” He says the corporation has not even allowed scrutiny of the bioreactors. “The only way forward is decentralised waste management. But that means less income for the mafia.”
Real estate developers will ensure landfills close anyway, Mr. Stalin says. According to Municipal Solid Waste Rules, residential buildings cannot be located within 500 m. of a dumping ground, and builders must wait at least 15 years after the closing of a landfill before starting construction on it. However, in the early 2000s, “businesses ensured the closing of the landfill at Chincholi Bunder, Malad, almost overnight, following a writ petition in the High Court.” The unscientific capping of the landfill, without the waste below being treated, saw appliances regularly breaking down in the buildings constructed on it. Tests revealed that the malfunctioning was due to the corrosive gases released from crevices in the ground.
“The land had high value,” Mr. Stalin says. “A similar thing is happening at Mulund, where new buildings are already coming up in the vicinity of the landfill. Deonar will go the same way.”
“I don’t believe the BMC seriously wants a solution,” says Mr. Sharma. “It is looking for more land. That means it doesn’t want to solve the problem; it is only interested in dumping.”
Dealing with plastic waste
Plastic is not the easiest material to degrade: the process takes thousands of years, and according to one estimate, Mumbai produces over a 1,000 MT of plastic waste per day. The city, however, has no separate plastic collection bins. Rag pickers collect PET bottles, milk pouches and plastic bags and sell them to recycling units across the city.
All plastic waste can be disposed of without creating environmental issues, says T.K. Bandopadhyay, Technical Director, Indian Centre for Plastics in the Environment (ICPE).
Plastic waste is a good replacement for coal in cement kilns. At least 600 kg of plastic — ranging from expired beauty lotions, soap covers to confectionary wrappers — can replace one tonne of coal. In Germany, 60 per cent of fuel comes from plastic waste, not coal, and India is the world’s second largest cement producer. However, cement kiln owners are not prepared to bear the cost of transportation.
Plastic waste can also be used in the construction of bitumin roads, as in the case of Dr. V.S. Agashe Road in Dadar.“The road was made five to six years ago and there is no major damage to it.” The reason this hasn’t been replicated is simple: the contractor community won’t benefit.
Mr. Bandopadhyay suggests big businesses can take the responsibility of collection and scientific disposal or recycling of plastic waste. Especially since thin bags and milk pouches have little buyback value but cause blockage of drains and end up in landfills or as marine litter. The Plastic Waste Management Rules 2016 spell out that users must cooperate with civic bodies for collecting plastic waste. Users or retailers could enter into buyback arrangements with waste-pickers, and build in costs — a few paise — into their final product. “This will also take the informal sector into account, and society will benefit.”
The ‘invisible’ link
There are up to 30,000 informal sector workers in the city, sorting through garbage and extracting material that can be sold to a variety of buyers (also usually in the informal sector), who then use them as raw material, says Jyoti Mhapsekar, President, Stree Mukti Sanghatana.
Waste is a revenue-spinner (see graphic above). “The BMC says it is spending ₹8 per kilo of waste for its disposal. The waste-picker can save the taxpayer this money, apart from ensuring savings on transportation cost and pollution. But they don’t get anything from the municipal corporation for this.” Raw material rates fluctuate, which means their income is unstable. Besides, they work in unhygienic conditions, and have no access to healthcare.
The latest MSW Rules mandate all municipalities to have waste-pickers enrolled with them, but there is an implementation gap, Ms. Mhapsekar says. The worst part, to her, is Mumbai’s attitude to them: “Someone else is doing the dirty work. Why do I need to bother?”
Segregation on paper
Segregation of waste was made mandatory under the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000 and under the BMC’s Cleanliness and Sanitation Bylaws, 2006
The central government’s Municipal Solid Waste Rules 2016 state: “Every waste generator shall segregate and store the waste generated by them in three separate streams, namely biodegradable, non-biodegradable and domestic hazardous wastes, in suitable bins and hand over segregated wastes to authorised waste pickers or waste collectors as per the direction or notification by the local authorities from time to time.”
