I take a delivery of vegetables, remove the vegetables from the plastic bag, and the plastic wrapping. The bag and the wrapping go into the bin, followed a while later with the peels and discarded bits of vegetables. The bin seems forever ready to take in whatever I throw into it: medicine wrappers, sanitary waste, paper, old batteries and so on.
While researching for this series of articles I realised both the quantum and variety of things that we, a household of four, end up throwing in the bin every day, and quite thoughtlessly so. The results: one full bin of 2.5 litres and another of 12 litres. Extrapolate this to understand the amount of garbage that the 21,673,000 people living in Mumbai generate.
Where does it all go?
BMC’s waste management system
According to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s Environment Status Report (ESR) 2022-23 Mumbai produced 6300 metric tonnes of waste per day (MTD) in 2022. BMC’s website puts the figure at 6500 MTD and requires 1396 trips per day in a fleet of 983 municipal and private vehicles for it to be carried to the two disposal sites in Mumbai: Deonar and Kanjurmarg.
Mumbai has three transfer stations in Mahalaxmi, Kurla and Versova from where waste is carried to two dumping grounds. Municipal solid waste (MSW) collected from the MCGM wards is brought to the refuse transfer stations and from there it is transported to the the dumping grounds in Big Close Body Refuse vehicles. Any dry waste that can be salvaged for recycling such as cartons, glass etc is picked out at this stage, but these efforts are limited if segregation has not been done at source and the dry waste is contaminated.
The third dumping ground which was located at Mulund has stopped receiving MSW now and the process of recovering land has commenced according to the ESR.
What’s in our waste?
The BMC identifies six categories of municipal solid waste:
- Bio-degradable (wet) waste
- Specified hazardous waste (as listed in Schedule III)
- Bio-medical waste
- Construction and demolition waste
- Bulk garden and horticulture waste, including recyclable tree trimmings
- All other non-biodegradable or dry waste including recyclable and non-recyclable waste
| Composition of waste in Mumbai | ||
| Sr.no | Type of solid waste | Percentage |
| 1 | Food waste (organic-wet) | 72.60% |
| 2 | Wood,cloth (organic-dry) | 3.51% |
| 3 | Sand, stone and fine earth | 17.37% |
| 4 | Plastic | 3.24% |
| 5 | Paper and recyclables (including metal) | 3.28% |
A variety of things and sources contribute to the waste generated in the city, requiring a complex ecosystem for its management. “This is the challenge. Right now Deonar dumping ground, Kanjurmarg, Mulund, all of them are overflowing,” says Ashwin Malwade of Ek Saath Foundation.
It is the responsibility of the Urban Local Body (ULB) to ensure the proper disposal of each stream or type, which in the case of Mumbai is the BMC. Depending on the kind of waste and the place of its generation, the journey of waste differs.
In this first part of the series, we take a look at the overall systems BMC has in place for waste management and at household waste.
Read more: Mumbai’s no.1 source of trash: Food waste
Segregation of household waste
In Mumbai, people live in independent homes, single buildings, apartment complexes or in informal settlements.
Most buildings and complexes employ housekeeping staff to collect garbage from each household. Some of them ensure the segregation of dry and wet waste. The housekeeping staff collect it in two separate bins and empty it into two separate bigger wheelie bins: one for dry and another for wet waste, which they give to the BMC garbage dumper truck also known as ghanta gadi, so called because it rings a bell to let people know of its arrival.
A different set of rules apply to bulk generators. As per the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 establishments which generate more than 100 kg of garbage of all streams put together are bulk generators. Also included in this category are gated communities which are more than 5000 sqm or have more than 300 flats. Ashwin explains that they are required to take care of their garbage themselves: tie up with recyclers for dry waste and compost their wet waste.
Shikha Agarwal who stays in a complex with 128 households in Andheri says, “Every household segregates at source. The committee members have taken a lot of effort to educate people about this.”
The housekeeping staff employed by them collect the organic and dry waste in two separate bins. The society has constructed a huge room at the entrance to the complex where the garbage is kept in wheelie bins and is then picked up by the BMC’s garbage pick-up vehicle everyday.
Pre-pandemic the BMC was enforcing this strictly, something that wasn’t possible due to the restrictions brought on by the pandemic. He says that post-pandemic too some bulk generator complexes have gone back to this system; they compost their wet waste in situ and are zero landfill contributors. For those who don’t compost themselves, the waste is largely picked up by private recyclers. “BMC connects them with recyclers and at subsidized rates; these bulk generators have been asked to give their waste to these recyclers and waste composting units,” says Ashwin.
Waste from informal settlements
According to the 2011 census an estimated 48.4% of Mumbai’s population lives in informal settlements. In February the BMC announced that they will float a tender to appoint a single agency to collect garbage from households, clean drains and sweep the roads inside the informal settlements, at a budget of Rs 1400 crore to be spent over four years.
Sunita Rewale who stays in an informal settlement or wadi in Vile Parle says that they segregate their waste and BMC appointed cleaners collect it from door to door. In addition to the money that the BMC pays them, every household also shells out Rs 20 per month for this service. But in Vidhi Jadhav’s wadi, which is much bigger, this facility is not available — each household dumps their garbage without segregation into a community bin.
As per BMC bye-laws of 2006, community bins are supposed to have two separate receptacles for wet and dry waste.
What happens to the waste after it is collected from your homes?
Although segregation is supposed to happen at source, not everyone does it. “The housekeeping staff at every residential complex also know there is value in waste,” points out Ashwin. They segregate things like pet bottles, cartons, glass bottles at source and ensure that this waste is monetised.
After reaching the dumping site, a round of secondary segregation takes place in sheds built for the purpose. An attempt is made to remove anything of value to reduce the refuse going into the landfill. It is segregated using conveyor belts and trommel machines which have a rotating screen of different mesh sizes, thus enabling sorting of garbage by size. The smallest bits are turned into Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) which is used in kilns in cement factories.
According to Ashwin, RDF accepts different grades of plastic as long as it is dry and clean and there are 24 such kilns which have been certified by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). These kilns have scrubbers to reduce the quantum of harmful gases like sulphur dioxide from emissions and to bring them under the permissible limit.
In 2015 bioreactor technology and composting were introduced. According to this report created by Praja, in 2022, 3,37,730 MT of solid waste was composted resulting in 23,934 MT of compost. However, experts doubt the quality of the compost produced as they say mixed waste may have been used for the composting. “The compost that is created has high volumes of lead, cadmium, all these heavy metals. So, this compost is not ideal to be used for organic use,” Ashwin points out.
These efforts are hardly enough to keep our landfills from bursting at the seams. They become receptacles of non-recyclable plastic, single-use plastic items multilayer packaging material such as packets of chips etc, dry waste contaminated with wet waste, or sometimes even bio-medical waste if it is not segregated properly.
Another way to reduce the garbage going into landfills is to use it in a waste-to-energy plant, but this poses a huge health hazard. Recently, the residents of Govandi won a long court battle for the removal of a biomedical waste treatment plant, only to be told that a waste-to-energy plant would come up at Govandi, a suburb which has the poorest air quality in the city.
‘Waste not, want not’ thus takes on a whole new meaning when taken in the context of waste management and dumping grounds.
In the next part of this series, we take a look at how recycling can offer solutions to this problem.
| You can read more about solid waste management on these websites |
| A Step by Step Guidance for Urban Local Bodies to implement the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 Report on The Status of Civic Issues in Mumbai (by Praja) |