Bin-less waste collection
Mudda-
- The traditional method of garbage collection expects the
householders to place the garbage into nearby dustbins, which are to be
cleared by the municipal staff who come with a handcart. Once the cart is
full, the staff would empty it into neighbourhood collection bins,
commonly called as ‘dhalao’. As for the public places, the municipal staff
are expected to sweep and pour the collected waste into the nearest
dhalaos. Municipality lorries then empty the dhalaos and take the
collected waste to the centralised place, commonly called the ‘garbage
dump’. This method has suffered from serious infirmities
as householders and commercial establishments keep filling the dhalaos
throughout the day, attracting birds and stray dogs to find their feed
and, in the process, spread the garbage along with the bacteria and other
germs in the environment.
Tarkeeb
- It would be desirable to remove the bins and dhalaos
from the framework of garbage collection and ensure direct collection from
handcarts into the lorries. In this process, the households would have to
dispose of the waste generated by them only once a day, and
that too at the appointed time when the handcart arrives, and not
throughout the day. Collections in the handcarts from households and from public places
would go directly into lorries.
In summary, this arrangement would make the city ‘bin-less’. People who eat fruits while walking, for example, will need to carry the peel home and hand it over to municipal staff the next morning. This will prevent spread of waste along with germs in the environment, make segregation and recycling efficient, and give a cleaner look to the streets.
Effective
segregation
The various components of the city waste need
different technologies for recycling.
Mudda:-
- In China, the
mixed waste is put into incineration for generation of electricity. However, mixed waste would emanate toxic fumes, which would not
be acceptable in India, particularly in the wake of highly scattered
nature of habitations, which does not leave any large stretch of
uninhabited land. Even if it becomes possible to find a large tract of
uninhabited territory, incineration of
garbage would still be undesirable from pollution point of view. Efforts have been made to trap the fumes, but that distorts the financial viability of the project.
- Therefore, segregation of the city waste before putting
it for recycling is necessary. However, if the entire city waste were
brought in one or two or three places for segregation, it would be
unrealistic to expect its segregation on a daily basis, in view of the
large volumes. Most cities are facing this harsh reality, resulting in the
piling up of garbage into heaps that look almost like a hillock, if not a
mountain.
Tarkeeb:-
The effective solution would be segregation at the source. However, at the household level, it would be unrealistic to segregate the waste into numerous types. The households can have two bins, for dry and wet waste, respectively. Garbage collectors' handcart can also have two compartments accordingly. The truck too can have the same arrangement. However, green waste should preferably be collected independently, as it is normally in huge volumes and from limited sources. At the final off-loading point, further segregation can be handled.
Component-wise
recycling
Each type of the waste would need a different
method of treatment for recycling.
- green waste can be conveniently converted into fuel
cakes,
- household kitchen waste into organic manure,
- plastic waste into low-density oil and methane
gas,
- paper waste into paper,
- most metallic waste can be recycled rather conveniently,
etc.
- C&D waste can be gainfully converted into bricks and
tiles.
As a thumb rule, five kg kitchen waste would
yield one kg manure and the conversion cost would be '1 per kg, while the manure
can be sold at '5 per kg, leading to nearly full recovery of the operating
costs.
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Here is a possibility of inadequate cost recovery in some cases, owing to technology
options, quality of the waste and other local factors and such viability gap
would need to be funded by the municipality through appropriate taxes or user
charges. Technologically
speaking, recycling would need to aim at zero net waste and zero landfill.
Most cities are conveniently putting the last component of refuge into the soil
or landfill, which is an environmentally hazardous option. Governments would need
to promote research activities to resolve the issue of recycling of the
seemingly unrecyclable remnant of the segregated waste.
Making recycled waste viable for reuse
Mudda
- Technological developments have made it increasingly
possible to put the recycled waste into productive use.
- However, the primary requirement for sustainability of
the options for reuse is financial viability, which, in turn, would depend on lowering the input
costs, and maximising the realisation from sale of the output from
recycling.
Tarkeeb :-
- A major requirement for this would be segregation of the
collected waste before recycling.
- Segregation of waste would enable its processing through
specialised plants for each category of waste. Moreover, the quality of
the recycled output, such as manure, would be much better with segregated
waste materials.
- Another significant input cost reduction would come from
savings in the cost of transportation of the waste from the point of
generation to that of processing or recycling. This saving can come about
most effectively by setting up decentralised plants.
Decentralised
option for SWM
Mudda :-
Traditionally, cities adopted the model of waste
management based on a single point of disposal, commonly called the ‘dumping
yard’. Earlier, the dumping yards
used to be on the outskirts of the city with no population or no significant
population. However, cities have a natural tendency to expand, resulting in
either wholesale absorption of the peri-urban areas or their development as
outgrowth habitations.
In either situation, the dumping yard becomes a
sore point and the residents of the surrounding areas start resenting the
dumping yard in their vicinity. As a result, the city starts looking for yet
another dumping yard still farther, though in the process, the garbage is
required to be transported to still longer distances.
- In a typical Class 1 city, such transportation
distances could run from 10 to 20 km, leading to huge expenditure.
- Transportation of civic waste to long distances
traversing through the various parts of the city is not only sore to
sight, but also unhygienic.
- Moreover, as stated before, piling up of thousands of tonnes
of garbage in the centralised dumping yards makes it impossible to
segregate the waste into specific types for recycling and invariably leads to burying 20 to 30 percent of the waste
into land-fills, which itself creates environmental hazards.
Tarkeeb :-
Decentralised waste management systems provide an excellent solution. As of now, systems for recycling household waste with capacities ranging from 100 to 2,000 kg are available in the price range of '20-100 lakh.
- Besides being light on the municipal budget, such systems offer the great advantage of requiring very little land – of the order of 1,000 to 10,000 square feet only and thus can be installed in every neighbourhood or in the premises of the apartment complexes, campuses of universities, hospitals and similar institutions.
- Such decentralised systems do away with the need for
having dhalaos and even the trucks for transportation of the waste,
because the distance between the point of generation and that of
processing is reduced to few hundred metres, which can be covered directly
by handcarts.
Decentralised systems enable waste segregation
on an almost real-time basis, because the quantities collected are small and are
amenable to segregation and processing on a daily basis.
- Once the waste is treated within hours of generation, it
does not decompose in the open ambient situation and thus the foul smell
and harmful bacteria/germs do not spread out in the environment.
- Decentralised systems also bring the citizens physically
closer to the physical realities of management of the waste that they
generate and thus make them more aware and responsible in respect of the
issues related to solid waste management.
Decentralised systems make it easier for municipalities to procure the systems and also to operate the same, as the technology and costs are within their capabilities. The municipal staff can also be motivated to indulge in improvisation and innovation in such systems, being relatively simple.
