Imagine landfills as big as New Delhi. That is what a study says India will need if waste continues to grow at the current rate of five per cent a year.

There is cause for concern. India generates about 62 million tonnes of waste annually. Union minister Prakash Javadekar told Parliament that 78 per cent of India’s waste went unprocessed and ended up in a landfill.

India is among the top 10 countries in the world when it comes to generating solid municipal waste. By 2030, it is projected that the waste generated in the country will double in volume, The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) and Pricewaterhouse Coopers said in their 2017 joint study.

The government has stepped in with a clutch of rules to deal with the situation. New solid waste management rules were laid down in 2016 under the Solid Waste Management Bill and notified by the government in 2018, replacing the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000. This was the sixth notification of the Ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEFCC) that related to waste management. It had previously brought out notifications to fight plastic, e-waste, biomedical, hazardous, construction and demolition waste.

But a lot of the changes are only on paper. The rules were announced two years ago but the waste management industry is still in its nascent stage. Officials from MoEFCC said they were not willing to comment on the issue.

The Assocham and PwC study has found that by 2050, India will need landfills the size of New Delhi, or about 88 sq km, to tackle waste. Metros such as Delhi and Mumbai will be contributing 80 per cent of the entire waste generated in the country.....Read more

Source web page: Business Line