|
<u>Municipal solid waste management</u><br>Offering opportunities
Mira Shah
Municipal solid waste (MSW) management in India's cities can be viewed either as the Herculean task of cleaning the Augean stables or as an opportunity for the emergence and development of a lucrative MSW industry (see table). The business proposition is obviously a better and more effective solution. It will bring in professionalism, profits and dignity to a task long neglected and left to those (safai karamcharis, ragpickers) who had no alternative and were ill-equipped to handle it.
Elsewhere in the world, waste management has seen the emergence of large, publicly quoted companies with turnovers running into billions of euros/dollars. India with its annual generation of more than 100,000 tonnes of waste (estimate of the Expert Committee in 2000)-and this is growing rapidly with affluence-offers excellent opportunities for the emergence of an MSW industry and for attracting useful foreign direct investment, provided the right policies are formulated and implemented (enforced) transparently, and investment-conducive conditions are created. The Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2000 of the Environment Protection Act have already been enacted to give the legislative framework.
Privatisation of MSW services by a handful of municipalities in the past few years has seen the beginnings of this new sector. Panjim has, perhaps, advanced the furthest in compliance to MSW Rules 2000. "Together for Panjim" is a well thought through programme covering public awareness and urban infrastructure; it is one of the rare cities in India where citizens are not hampered by the large metal, unhygienic and unsightly garbage skips that mar cityscapes even in large metropolises like Mumbai. Chennai was the first to privatise waste collection and transport, and the services of the French operator, Onyx, have been appreciated by residents.
The MSW value chain covers products and services for the different stages in MSW flow from the generator's doorstep (e.g. household, restaurant, shops) to its ultimate disposal in a landfill. Large-scale waste treatment and landfill companies are urgently required. Waste collection and transport need to be modernised. Recycling, including recovery of such waste from the source (now done by ragpickers), must be brought into the formal sector. Public awareness is indispensable and so is capacity building.
It is not far-fetched to imagine neat, environment-friendly solutions based on economies of scale for MSW management in India. The change needs vision and political will, and private enterprise. The technologies and funds will flow, even from outside India, once an investor-friendly climate is created. Chinese cities like Shanghai have already understood the advantages of MSW businesses and are attracting FDI and localised world-class solutions.
|
Indicative Table of Opportunities for MSW Businesses |
| Value chain |
Services |
Products |
| Waste collection and transport from generation site to a
transfer station |
• Operators for collecting waste from households, restaurants, commercial establishments, litterbins along streets
• Operators for collecting special types of waste (eg, hazardous urban waste such as used batteries, motor oils etc)
• Bin maintenance, repair, and replacement
• Vehicle maintenance and repair |
• Bins & Vehicles
• Vehicles
• Truck-mounted compactors with bin lifting mechanisms
• Workshop equipment for vehicle maintenance
• Workshop equipment for bin management
• Vehicles for transporting special types of waste .
• Truck-mounted hook loaders. |
| Waste transport from the transfer station to a treatment plant |
Operators for transporting different types of waste to corresponding treatment or recycling plants, or landfill |
Bulk refuse carriers for different types of waste streams |
| Transfer station management |
Operators for design, construction, and management of transfer stations for further separating waste streams |
• Waste sorting stations
• Ramps |
| Waste treatment |
• Operators for design, construction, and operation of treatment plants for different types of waste:
• Marketing of products from waste treatment |
Equipment for treatment plants |
| Sanitary landfill management |
Design, construction and operation of sanitary landfills |
Vehicles and equipment for handling waste |
| Waste recycling |
• Collection and transport of different waste streams (plastic, paper, glass, metal)
• Recycling according to waste type |
• Large closed bins for different types of recyclables
• Kiosks for receiving recyclables
• Vehicles for collecting different types of waste |
| Capacity building |
• Agencies for training municipal officers in modern, efficient methods of MSW policy formulation and management for adoption of best practices
• Agencies for training staff. |
Training tools |
| Waste management information systems |
City mapping for routing and GSP tracking systems for vehicles |
• Software & Databases |
| Planning |
• Consultancy and advisory services with international track records for devising master plans and drafting of norms at national level |
|
| Biomedical waste management |
• Collection and transport of biomedical waste from generation points (hospitals, clinics and laboratories, household biomedical waste) |
• Special biomedical waste bins
• Vehicles for transport
• Treatment units |
The starting point for any efficient system is a master plan drafted by the municipality; this is the operational tool that describes the organisation and infrastructure required for managing waste. It also defines the different categories of waste and the streams for eliminating them. The plan enumerates and organises the treatment units and determines the collection zones for certain categories. In short, it sets the objectives of waste management in a city and the measures to be taken to attain them.
Sanitising India's cities is not an impossible task. At stake is their cleanliness and health, and, of course, the image of India.
[2 May 2005]
|
