1. SWM ADVICE FOR ULBS Almitra H Patel Member, Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste Management in Class 1 Cities almitrapatel@rediffmail.com www.almitrapatel.com 1

2. MSW RULES ARE MANDATORY NGT IS NOW ENFORCING THEM The Municipal Solid Waste (Mgt & Handling) Rules 2000 were framed as a response to a PIL No WP (C ) 888/1996 for improved waste mgt. The hon. Supreme Court forwarded this PIL to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) at Delhi in September 2014 to ensure compliance. The NGT had directed all States and Union Territories to submit their Solid Waste Management Plans for complying with Rules. 2

3. NGT REQUIRES STATE SWMgt PLANS BEFORE 17 MARCH 2015 POSITIVELY All Chief Secretaries of States and UTs were summoned at last NGT hearing on 6 Feb 2015 and told they were personally liable for submitting their State Solid Waste Mgt Plans. The SWMgt Plan has to be time-bound and spell out how different aspects of the MSW Rules will be complied with, and when. 3

4. Kar. Plan must cover All ULBs Population/ULB No of ULBs Waste/ULB in Tons/day 10-20,000 TP 94 2 - 4 20-50,000 TMC 68 4 - 10 0.5 - 1 lac 26 10 - 20 1-2 lac 12 20 - 60 2-3 lac 3 70 – 100 3-5 lac 7 100 - 200 5-10 lac 3 200 – 400 10+ lac Blr 1 3500 tpd Blr So work to make 190 or 93% into Zero-waste towns managing waste within town limits 4

5. TO COMPLY WITH MSW RULES : “MINIMISE WASTE TO LANDFILL” 1, COLLECT UNMIXED Wet and Dry wastes separately AT THE DOORSTEP. 2, TRANSPORT UNMIXED wastes Separately. Public will cooperate if ULBS are SEEN TO KEEP WASTES UNMIXED. 3, DRY WASTE TO WASTE COLLECTORS for sale to waste buyers, scrap dealers, recyclers. Unmixed Dry waste is clean, so it fetches a better price and reduces absenteeism of waste-collectors. 4, STABILISE WET WASTE by unloading waste in Stacks or Wind-rows or by Bio-methanation. 5

6. DOORSTEP COLLECTION IN PUSHCARTS WORKS BEST: 2 Persons for ~350 homes. Receive doorstep waste into a sorting basin first to put pure wet waste in bins and sort dry waste into different bags 6

7. WASTE SHOULD NOT TOUCH GROUND Carefully match collection timings from primary (pushcart) to secondary vehicle (tractor/truck). Max 1 hr wait at transfer point 7

8. PUSHCART BINS TO TRACTORS or Mini Trucks IS BEST OPTION Waste need not be touched by hand. Bins can be easily unloaded onto decentralised Stacks or small Windrows. Can travel to 10-15 km and make 3 trips/day REMOVE ALL STREET DUSTBINS AND BEAUTIFY THAT SPOT WITH RANGOLI AND FLOWERPOTS Remove old waste heaps and debris in mass cleanup drive AFTER starting door- step collection 8

9. STABILISE WET WASTE BY STACK COMPOSTING in ‘Banve’ Prepare wooden frames with baskets or mats on it, to let in cool air from below the stack. ADD WET WASTE DAILY in THIN LAYERS to get enough air (0.2m = 8” max thk, go 2m high) Sprinkle with 5% FRESH cowdung solution to speed up decomposition. Leave for 1-3 months to mature it. Each Im x 2m stack takes 0.4 tpd for 10 days 9

10. AUCTION THE STABILISED HEAPS Stacks need no turning labour, power, equipment Income from Unmixed Wet waste to supervisors as reward for their efforts Farm soils improve with this organic manure, crops need less water. OK for 190 ULBs upto 2 lac pop. Area reqd 4 sq m/ton/ day for 3months, then reuse 10

11. To comply with Rules, STABILISE WET WASTE : UNLOAD WASTE IN WIND-ROWS (NOT DUMPS). Form long parallel heaps 2meters high) with space between rows for turning every 5 – 7 days for aeration. Then there is NO ODOUR or LEACHATE TO POLLUTE GROUNDWATER, as the waste will be Stabilised after 4-6 turnings and ready for sieving & use by farmers. 100 tpd needs 200 m 3 /day = 3m x 67m windrows/day on 1.5 hectare concrete pad for stabilising. 11

12. Plastic in mixed waste is a major problem in composting and needs very costly machinery to remove 12

13. DO NOT MIX DEBRIS OR DRAIN SILT WITH DOORSTEP WASTE Keep separate afternoon collection and remove silt at once into separate vehicle. Do not leave on road to dry. Allot half-km stretch to one person and give a wheely bin or bins on handcarts. Unload directly into leakproof truck. Use to improve roadsides 13

14. Keep construction Raw mtls off the road Builders must store and dispose of their soil waste and brick waste & stones separately for reuse. Concrete blocks and waste concrete and plaster must be given separately for crushing into recycled sand. 14

15. COMPACTORS ARE TOTALLY UNSUITABLE FOR SECONDARY TRANSPORT Transferring push-cart bins to tractors or trucks works best for leaving streets clean. Compactors are a lazy option for dump loading at ground level because matching the vehicle designs for transfer of waste from primary to secondary vehicles requires intelligent planning. Compacting dry waste makes it unsortable and unusable for the recycling trade Compacted wet waste is mostly incompressible and turns anaerobic and smelly Consider only for metros taking waste 40+ km away. 15

16. NEVER OUTSOURCE OVER 50% COLLECTION & TRANSPORT Ensure healthy competition to avoid both union pressure and monopolistic private practices. Never give Collection+Transport as well as Processing+Disposal to same party without stringent city and third-party monitoring to avoid Kanpur-type scams, showing 10 times higher collection and receipts than actuals. 16

17. BENEFITS OF DECENTRALISED SWM Savings in transport labour, diesel, repairs. Fewer traffic jams, carbon emissions, no pollution of distant unmonitored spaces. No fear of village protest for ill-managed sites Savings can pay to support on-site SWM options by individuals or bulk generators, so as to Minimise Waste To Landfill. Only 10% total waste needs permanent site. 17

18. CLUSTER SITES ARE WORST OPTION! They will be nobody’s baby, just like Common Effluent Treatment Plants. Substandard waste will reach it, like Akbar’s milk hundi. Small & Medium Towns now have advantage of manageable quantities of waste and many can easily become no-outside-dump cities with unmixed discards & decentralised SWM. Villages resisting outside waste will force this 18

19. INCINERATION IS UNVIABLE AND NOT ALLOWED The Planning Commission’s May 2014 Kasturirangan Report permits it for consideration only FOR DRY WASTE IN METRO CITIES WITH LARGE TONNAGES Indian mixed waste has too low calorific value so there is not a single success story in India since 1996. Most are scams, costing 50 times more per ton of waste and 6 times more per kwh generated, if at all. 19

20. STRICT MONITORING OF WASTE - MANAGEMENT SITES IS A MUST Compost plants awarded to private parties are not monitored, often on purpose. City pays them (and someone shares?) ‘Tipping Fees’ to allow open-dumping of waste transported by ULB to ULB’s own land given on long lease at trivial cost. Tipping fees abroad are for return on massive capital investment in private land. So PAY ONLY SUPPORT PRICE ON OUTPUT of compost to ensure proper processing. 20

21. DUMPING & LEVELLING IS ILLEGAL ! NO SOIL COVER ON RAW WASTE ANAEROBIC AIRLESS WASTE PRODUCES POLLUTING LEACHATE, ruining wells. DO NOT DUMP INTO LOW- LYING AREA or QUARRY PITS. Then you cannot see or collect leachate, seeping far below. Fill quarry pits with debris or waste soil, then form windrows on this newly created space. 21

22. EXISTING OPEN DUMPS MUST BE IMPROVED AND REMEDIATED Abandoning existing sites is not an option, it favours land-speculators. Bio-mining is the best option. It removes all material down to near-ground-level, leaving 15% rejects & no methane-generating waste. At Gorai, 1 hectare of 12 meter height was cleared in 4 months for Rs 10 lacs in 2008, recovering land worth Rs 600/sft or Rs 28 crores/hectare for re-use or other plans. 22

23. BIOMINING OPTIONS Loosen top 6” of waste with cultivator,hand- pick out large wastes, heap into windrows. Add biocultures or old compost and turn as for fresh waste. Sieve out organic fraction called bio- earth and use it for restoration of mined areas by promoting growth of grass, bushes and later trees. Raichur is testing a garbage sorter which leaves almost no waste behind: it gives clean plastics, clean fine organics, clean sand / gravel. Can start work at many points around dump. This does not work on wet fresh waste. 23

24. DO NOT CAP UNLINED OPEN DUMPS Landfill gases seep out from sides with disastrous results on health of electronics & nearby residents, as seen at Mindspace Complex at Malad, Mumbai. Methane capture is max 55% even in best lined landfills. Plateau above 30 o side slopes is only 1/3 rd area of base which biomining down to ground level can give. 24

25. ADMINISTRATIVE & POLITICAL WILL IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FOR SUCCESSFUL SWM Technology is never the problem. solutions at all scales of operation are available. AIM FOR AND YOU CAN ACHIEVE A LITTER-FREE, BIN-FREE, DUMP-FREE TOWN 25

26. BEGIN AWARENESS TRG IN ULB Awareness for PKs / SKs and their maistrys / supervisors on SEPARATE TRANSPORT of dry waste, pure wet waste, mixed-wet waste. Citizens cooperate fast whhen they see this. Give new councillors & MLAs a good SWM briefing to help them take sound decisions. Give maistrys upwards imprest = 1 day’s pay for rapid response in the field. 26