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The mismanagement of solid waste in urban areas poses a grave threat to public health and the quality of life of people living in those areas. Up to now there has been no comprehensive policy in India that deals with the whole cycle of waste management from production at household level to collection and disposal.
Existing policies are largely regulatory and fail to address wider environmental and public health concerns. Local authorities tend to see the problem of waste as one of cleaning and disposal rather than tackling the problem as a whole.
It is almost seven years since rules on the management of household waste were first introduced in India. Those rules outlined steps to be taken for the management of household waste. They clearly defined the roles and responsibilities of those involved in dealing with the country’s waste disposal.
However, since then there has been little progress. Simple measures such as segregation of waste and door-to-door collection have not been implemented. Instead local authorities have tended to rely on expensive incineration and waste-to-energy (WTE) schemes.
Politicians appear to be committed to the idea that WTE technology is the best solution to the problem of waste management. However, these waste energy plants have been tried and tested in several major Indian cities and have been shown to fail.
Plants in Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad and Mumbai were built at enormous cost to the taxpayer. In Delhi, the plant, which was installed in 1984, functioned for a few days but was closed down soon afterwards because the waste being sent to the plant was not suitable to burn and so did not produce enough energy.