Guest Column : DE-CENTRALISED SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT A NEED OF THE HOUR

Solid waste management the world over has become a major issue, with shrinking land availability for constructing scientific landfills.Not in my backyard approach by citizens, do not allow the land-fills to come up in areas inhabited by the people. There is a struggle between the local bodies and citizens on account of air quality issues, rodent menace, avian activity, stray dogs, rag pickers exposed to health hazards and above all, the increasing transportation costs to move the garbage to the common landfill sites. The current method of garbage disposal will not hold good for the future and a comprehensive waste management approach is required at the source level.In India, each citizen generates on, an average, approx 300 gms of waste per day. This waste is typically a co-mingled waste consisting of organic material such as kitchen waste, vegetable waste, plastics, metal coated packaging material, metallic objects and house hold dust etc. Even though, pre-segregation is vigorously advertised, implantation is still a major issue. Even when the waste is segregated, it is often found that the segregated waste gets co-mingled during the transportation, handling and end up at the common landfill, defeating the whole purpose of segregation. Increasing the number of bins, collecting different wastes at different times and other measures have so far did not yield the desired results. There may be a few examples of successful projects where segregation is implemented but these successes are very few.We have also seen that citizens are the victims of apathy from many local bodies where the systemic inefficiencies. Occasional industrial action by municipal workers, transporters, natural calamities, all lead to inefficiencies in solid waste management. Besides, our dependence on nature and the microbiology increases the need for large tracts of land as any biological process takes app 12 weeks. Every day accumulation of garbage will not be converted biologically, the same day and hence we need to reserve huge land mass for the waste disposal activities.Considering all the above difficulties, we have to evolve a de-centralised system, wherein the waste is not moved from one place to another and it is converted to a useful product at the source of generation itself. At source mitigation, reduces the land fill area requirement drastically. Also, the reduced cost of transportation, the green house gas emissions by the compactors that move the garbage (Fuel consumption), the methane and other harmful emissions from the landfills, will add an indirect benefit to the society. A De-centralized system must be compact, low on energy consumption and should be operable by an un-skilled person.There are a few systems available to undertake such an exercise. For the organic waste, there is a 24 hour composting system that converts the kitchen waste, garden trimmings, left over food etc into compost. However, this method leaves the non-organic waste untouched and thus offers a part solutionSimilarly, there is yet another system, wherein the entire waste as generated in house hold consisting of organic matter, left over food, plastics, packaging materials etc., is fed into a machine, which converts the waste into usable products like combustible fuel, combustible gas and residue rich in organic carbon. The fuel being a light fuel similar to Diesel fuel, can be used as blend for the regular diesel used in the generators. The value is realized by the residents through lower fuel costs to generate common power for street lighting etc. The gas released by the system is akin to LPG gas and has a high calorific value. The gas is typically re-used to provide the energy to the processing system itself and thus the system becomes energy independent. Excess gas generated can be converted into electricity using a gas fuel generator. The organic carbon can be used as a soil nutrient in place of chemical fertilizers and can thus be consumed.This system offers an environmentally friendly and Zero discharge solution. These kind of systems are continuously operating systems and continue to convert the co-mingled wastes on the same day leaving no garbage for tomorrow. The same day Polycrack mitigation system is a small foot print system, occupies minimum space and can be housed in a garage. The best part is that these systems can process co-mingled, un-segregated, wet garbage without any pre-processing requirements.If we consider a residential building consisting of 100 flats, each flat having 4 residents then the 400 residents will generate an average of 120 kgs per day. Adding the garden trimmings and other waste, a 200 kgs per day system is sufficient for a colony of this size. The sizing o thee units can be done based on the no. of residents and the quantity of garbage generated.Existing residential colonies, towers etc., may find it difficult to implement these systems due to the Capital cost requirements. So, in order to encourage the residents to switch over to these systems, local bodies should reduce the taxes as part of the taxes are anyway spent on garbage transportation and landfill management. Similarly, all new buildings must be asked to introduce such systems for in-house waste management with similar incentives. In the buildings built by the builders for re-sale, the cost of the waste management system can be distributed among the residents and the increase in cost on a per sq. ft basis is negligible and it will not pinch the new buyers at all. Similarly, operating costs of these systems can be recovered through a distributed cost and collected from the residents on a monthly basis and included in their monthly maintenance bills. The operating costs are also not high and they are affordable when the costs are distributed amongst the residents.The future of the solid waste management lies in innovative solutions like same day mitigation and the world will be a better place to live once the entire population switches over to the new innovative solutions rather than following the age old systems that do not deliver results any more.

Raghavendra Rao Turlapati is the Director of Sustainable Technologies & Environmental Projects Pvt Ltd (STEPS), based in Mumbai.