Waste Management in India

Solid wastes are the discarded (abandoned or considered waste-like) materials. Solid waste means any garbage, refuse, sludge from a wastewater treatment plant, or air pollution control facility and other discarded materials including solid, liquid, semi-solid, or contained gaseous material, resulting from industrial, commercial, mining and agricultural operations, and from community activities. But it does not include solid or dissolved materials in domestic sewage, or solid or dissolved materials in irrigation return flows or industrial discharges.

E – WASTE

The discarded and end-of-life electronic products ranging from computers, equipment used in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), home appliances, audio and video products and all of their peripherals are popularly known as Electronic waste (E-waste).

E-waste is not hazardous if it is stocked in safe storage or recycled by scientific methods or transported from one place to the other in parts or in totality in the formal sector. The e-waste can, however, be considered hazardous if recycled by primitive methods.

E – Waste in India

•  “The Global E-Waste Monitor 2014”, 17 lakh tonnes of e-waste generation was reported in the country in 2014. No comprehensive State-wise inventorization of e-waste generation in the country has been done.
• In India, among top ten cities, Mumbai ranks first in generating e-waste followed by Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmadabad, Hyderabad, Pune, Surat and
• Nagpur.
• The 65 cities generate more than 60% of the total gen-erated e-waste, whereas, 10 states generate 70% of the total e-waste.
• Most of the e-waste is recycled in India in unorganized units, which engage significant number of manpower. Recovery of metals by primitive means is a most hazardous act.
• The recycling process, if not carried out properly, can cause damage to human being through inhalation of gases during recycling, contact of the skin with hazard-ous substances and contact during acid treatment used in recovery process.
• Proper education, awareness and most importantly al-ternative cost effective technology need to be provided so that better means can be provided to those who earn the livelihood from this.
• A holistic approach is needed to address the challenges faced by India in e-waste management. A suitable mechanism needs to be evolved to include small units in unorganized sector and large units in organized sector into a single value chain.

Plastic Waste

Plastics are considered to be one of the wonderful inventions of 20th Century. They are widely used as packing and carry bags because of cost and convenience. But plastics are now considered as environmental hazard due to the “Throw away culture”.

 Source of generation of waste plastics

• Household
• Health and medicare
• Hotel and catering
• Air/rail travel
• Food packaging industry

Effects

• The land gets littered by plastic bag garbage and becomes ugly and unhygienic.
• Conventional plastics have been associated with reproductive problems in both humans and wildlife.
• Dioxin (highly carcinogenic and toxic) by-product of the manufacturing process is one of the chemicals believed to be passed on through breast milk to the nursing infant.
• Burning of plastics, especially PVC releases this dioxin and also furan into the atmosphere. Thus, conventional plastics, right from their manufacture to their disposal are a major problem to the environment.
• Plastic bags can also contaminate foodstuffs due to leaching of toxic dyes and transfer of pathogens.
• Careless disposal of plastic bags chokes drains, blocks the porosity of the soil and causes problems for groundwater recharge.
• Types
• Solid wastes are classified depending on their source:
• a) Municipal waste,
• b) Hazardous waste and
• c) Biomedical waste or hospital waste.
• d) Municipal solid waste

a) Municipal waste

• Municipal solid waste consists of household waste, construction and demolition debris, sanitation residue, and waste from streets.
• With rising urbanization and change in lifestyle and food habits, the amount of municipal solid waste has been increasing rapidly and its composition changing.
• In 1947 cities and towns in India generated an estimated 6 million tonnes of solid waste, in 1997 it was about 48 million tonnes. More than 25% of the municipal solid waste is not collected at all.
• 70% of the Indian cities lack adequate capacity to trans-port it and there are no sanitary landfills to dispose of the waste. The existing landfills are neither well equipped and are not lined properly to protect against contamination of soil and groundwater.
• Over the last few years, the consumer market has grown rapidly leading to products being packed in cans, aluminium foils, plastics, and other such nonbiodegradable items that cause incalculable harm to the environment.

b) Hazardous waste

• Industrial and hospital waste is considered hazardous as they contain toxic substances. Hazardous wastes could be highly toxic to humans, animals, and plants and are corrosive, highly inflammable, or explosive.
• India generates around 7 million tonnes of hazardous wastes every year, most of which is concentrated in four states: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.
• Household waste that can be categorized as hazardous waste include old batteries, shoe polish, paint tins, old medicines, and medicine bottles.
• In the industrial sector, the major generators of hazardous waste are the metal, chemical, paper, pesticide, dye, refining, and rubber goods industries.
• Direct exposure to chemicals in hazardous waste such as mercury and cyanide can be fatal.

c. Hospital waste

• Hospital waste is generated during the diagnosis, treatment, or immunization of human beings or animals or in research activities or in the production or testing of biological.
• These chemicals include formaldehyde and phenols, which are used as disinfectants, and mercury, which is used in thermometers or equipment that measure blood pressure.
• It may include wastes like soiled waste, disposables, anatomical waste, cultures, discarded medicines, chemical wastes, disposable syringes, swabs, bandages, body fluids, human excreta, etc.
• These are highly infectious and can be a serious threat to human health if not managed in a scientific and discriminate manner.
• Surveys carried out by various agencies show that the health care establishments in India are not giving due attention to their waste management.
• After the notification of the Bio-medical Waste (Handling and Management) Rules, 1998, these establishments are slowly streamlining the process of waste segregation, collection, treatment, and disposal.

Treatment and disposal of solid waste

i) Open dumps

Open dumps refer to uncovered areas that are used to dump solid waste of all kinds. The waste is untreated, uncovered, and not segregated. It is the breeding ground for flies, rats, and other insects that spread disease. The rainwater run-off from these dumps contaminates nearby land and water thereby spreading disease. Treatment by open dumps is to be phased out.

ii) Landfills

Landfills are generally located in urban areas. It is a pit that is dug in the ground. The garbage is dumped and the pit is covered with soil everyday thus preventing the breeding of flies and rats. Thus, every day, garbage is dumped and sealed. After the landfill is full, the area is covered with a thick layer of mud and the site can thereafter be developed as a parking lot or a park.

Problems - All types of waste are dumped in landfills and when water seeps through them it gets contaminated and in turn pollutes the surrounding area. This contamination of groundwater and soil through landfills is known as leaching.

iii) Sanitary landfills

Sanitary landfill is more hygienic and built in a methodical manner to solve the problem of leaching. These are lined with materials that are impermeable such as plastics and clay, and are also built over impermeable soil. Constructing sanitary landfills is very costly.

iv) a) Municipal waste

The process of burning waste in large furnaces at high temperature is known as incineration. In these plants the recyclable material is segregated and the rest of the material is burnt and ash is produced.

Burning garbage is not a clean process as it produces tonnes of toxic ash and pollutes the air and water. A large amount of the waste that is burnt here can be recovered and recycled. In fact, at present, incineration is kept as the last resort and is used mainly for treating the infectious waste.

v) Pyrolysis

It is a process of combustion in absence of oxygen or the material burnt under controlled atmosphere of oxygen.  It is an alternative to incineration. The gas and liquid thus obtained can be used as fuels. Pyrolysis of carbonaceous wastes like firewood, coconut, palm waste, corn combs, cashew shell, rice husk paddy straw and saw dust, yields charcoal along with products like tar, methyl alcohol, acetic acid, acetone and a fuel gas.

vi) Composting

• Composting is a biological process in which micro-organisms, mainly fungi and bacteria, decompose degradable organic waste into humus like substance in the presence of oxygen.
• This finished product, which looks like soil, is high in carbon and nitrogen and is an excellent medium for  growing plants.
• It increases the soil’s ability to hold water and makes the soil easier to cultivate. It helps the soil retain more plant nutrients.
• It recycles the nutrients and returns them back to soil as nutrients.
• Apart from being clean, cheap, and safe, composting can significantly reduce the amount of disposable garbage.

vii) Vermiculture

It is also known as earthworm farming. In this method, Earth worms are added to the compost. These worms break the waste and the added excreta of the worms  makes the compost very rich in nutrients.

viii) Four R’s –

Waste Minimization Circles (WMC)

WMC helps Small and Medium Industrial Clusters in waste minimization in their industrial plants.

• This is assisted by the World Bank with the Ministry of Environment and Forests acting as the nodal ministry. The project is being implemented with the assistance of  National Productivity Council (NPC), New Delhi.
• The initiative also aims to realize the objectives of the Policy Statement for Abatement of Pollution (1992),  which states that the government should educate citizens about environmental risks, the economic and health dangers of resource degradation and the real economic cost of natural resources.
• The policy also recognizes that citizens and non-governmental organizations play a role in environmental monitoring, therefore, enabling them to supplement the regulatory system and recognizing their expertise where such exists and where their commitments and vigilance would be cost effective.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and plastic waste :

Extended Producer Responsibility is a policy approach under which producers are given a significant responsibility – financial and/or physical – for the treatment or disposal of post-consumer products.

Assigning such responsibility could in principle provide incentives to prevent wastes at the source, promote product design for the environment and support the achievement of public recycling and materials management goals.