Waste Management: Valuable Resource
Waste Management: Valuable Resource
Waste Management: Valuable Resource
valuable resource.
Waste management is all the activities and actions required to
manage waste from its inception to its final disposal.[1] This
includes amongst other things, collection, transport, treatment
and disposal of waste together with monitoring and regulation. It
also encompasses the legal and regulatory framework that
relates to waste management encompassing guidance on
recycling etc.
The term normally relates to all kinds of waste, whether
generated during the extraction of raw materials, the processing
of raw materials into intermediate and final products, the
consumption of final products, or other human activities,[1]
including municipal (residential, institutional, commercial),
agricultural, and social (health care, household hazardous
wastes, sewage sludge).[2] Waste management is intended to
reduce adverse effects of waste on health, the environment or
aesthetics.
Market Assessment
Estimates of the municipal1 and hazardous2 waste market were
above 1.5 billion and around 171 million respectively. In light
of Indias economic dynamism in the interregnum, the combined
market must now be over 3.7 billion (apart from nuclear waste
management that is not in the purview of SWM)
There is an increasing presence of the private sector in the SWM
particularly for door-to door collection of solid waste, street
sweeping in a limited way, secondary storage and transportation
and for treatment and disposal of waste. Cities which have
pioneered in public private partnerships (PPPs) in SWM include
Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Surat, Guwahati,
Mumbai, Jaipur and more.
The Government of India at the central level, has funded various
initiatives to address SWM by providing assistance to the tune
of 372.3 million under 12th Finance Commission (329.4
million under the 11th Finance Commission).
Policy and Regulatory Framework
The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and the
pollution control boards: Central Pollution Control Board
(CPCB) and State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) together
form the regulatory and administrative core of the sector.
Although nearly a decade has lapsed since the time limit for
implementation of the rules ran out in December 2003, yet there
are cities which have not initiated any measures at all. Given the
lack of in-house capability of municipal authorities and paucity
of resources, there have been successful attempts to outsource
certain services and resort to private sector/NGO participation in
providing SWM services such as door-to door collection, street
sweeping, secondary collection of waste, transportation of
waste, composting of waste and power generation from waste
and final disposal of waste at the engineered landfill.
However, the present capacity of municipalities in India to
manage the privatization process is quite limited. There is need
for developing in-house financial and managerial capability to
award contracts to private sector and monitoring services
provided by the private operator since the onus of ensuring
proper service delivery and compliance of standards lies with
the local bodies.
SNAPSHOT
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The Key Drivers for Sector Growth Progressively stricter
norms for the sector (especially for industrial and hazardous
wastes). Public interest litigations and the rulings of the
courts (Supreme Court) for domestic wastes. Scarcer (and
OBSERVATIONS
2. Social By reducing adverse impacts on health by proper waste management practices, the
resulting consequences are more appealing settlements. Better social advantages can lead
to new sources of employment and potentially lifting communities out of poverty especially in
some of the developing poorer countries and cities.
3. Environmental Reducing or eliminating adverse impacts on the environmental through
reducing, reusing and recycling, and minimizing resource extraction can provide improved
air and water quality and help in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
4. Inter-generational Equity Following effective waste management practices can provide
subsequent generations a more robust economy, a fairer and more inclusive society and a
cleaner environment.
Objectives:-
Importance:-
Methodology:Management of wastes
Throughout history, four basic methods for managing wastes have been used: dumping;
incineration (burning); recycling; and waste prevention. How these four methods are utilized
depends on the kind of wastes being managed. Municipal solid waste is much different than
industrial, agricultural, or mining waste. And hazardous waste poses such serious problems that it
needs to be handled by specialized techniques, even when it is generated with other types of
wastes.
Landfills. Early humans did not worry much about waste management. They simply left their
garbage where it dropped. But as permanent communities developed, people began to place their
waste in designated dumping areas. The use of such open dumps for garbage is still common in
some parts of the world.
But open dumps have major disadvantages, especially in heavily populated areas. Toxic
chemicals can filter down through a dump and contaminate groundwater. (The liquid that filters
through a dump or land-filljust as water percolates or filters through coffee grounds to make
coffeeis called leachate.) Dumps also may generate methane, an explosive gas produced when
organic wastes decompose under certain conditions.
In many parts of the world today, open dumps have been replaced by landfills, also known as
sanitary landfills. The sanitary landfill was apparently invented in England in the 1920s. At a
landfill, garbage is covered at the end of every day with several inches of soil. Landfilling
became common in the United States in the 1940s. By the late 1950s, it was the dominant solid
waste disposal method in the nation.
Early landfills had significant leachate and methane problems. But those have largely been
resolved at landfills built in the past 20 years. Today's landfills are lined with several feet of clay
and with thick plastic sheets. Leachate is collected at the bottom, drained through pipes, and
processed. Methane gas also is safely piped out of the landfill.
The dumping of waste does not take place on land only. Ocean dumping makes use of barges that
carry garbage out to sea. This technique was once used as a disposal method by some U.S.
coastal cities and is still practiced by some nations. Sewage sludge, or processed sewage, was
dumped at sea in huge quantities by New York City until 1992, when it was finally prohibited.
Also called biosolids, sewage sludge is not generally considered solid waste but is sometimes
composted with organic municipal solid waste.
Incineration. Incineration has a long history in municipal solid waste management. Some
American cities began to burn their garbage in the late nineteenth century in devices called
cremators. These devices were not very efficient, however, and cities eventually went back to
dumping or other methods. In the 1930s and 1940s, many cities built new types of garbage
burners known as incinerators. Many incinerators have now been shut down, primarily because
of the air pollution they create.
Waste burning enjoyed yet another revival in the 1970s and 1980s. The new incinerators, many
of which are still in operation, are called resource recovery or waste-to-energy plants. In addition
to burning garbage, they produce heat or electricity that is used in nearby buildings or residences
or sold to a utility. Many local governments became interested in waste-to-energy plants
following the U.S. energy crisis in 1973. But, by the mid-1980s, it had become difficult to find
locations to build these facilities, once again mainly because of air quality issues.
Another problem with incineration is that it generates ash, which must be landfilled. Incinerators
usually reduce the volume of garbage by 70 to 90 percent. The rest comes out as ash that often
contains high concentrations of toxic substances.
Recycling and waste prevention. Municipal solid waste will probably always be landfilled or
burned to some extent. Since the mid-1970s, however, nondisposal methods such as waste
prevention and recycling have become more popular. Because of public concerns and the high
costs of landfilling and incineration, local governments want to reduce the amount of waste that
needs to be disposed.
Even the earliest civilizations recycled some items before they became garbage. Broken pottery
was often ground up and used to make new pottery, for example. Recycling has taken many
forms. One unusual type of recycling, called reduction, was common in large U.S. cities from
about 1900 to 1930. In reduction plants, wet garbage, dead horses, and other dead animals were
cooked in large vats to produce grease and fertilizer. A more familiar, and certainly more
appealing, type of recycling took place during World War II (193945), when scrap metal was
collected to help the war effort. Modern-day recycling has had two recent booms, from about
1969 to 1974 and another that began in the late 1980s. At the beginning of the twenty-first
century, the recycling rate in the United States had risen to 28 percent, an increase of more than
10 percent from a decade before.
Reuse and repair are the earliest forms of waste prevention, which also is known as waste
reduction. When tools, clothes, and other necessities were scarce, people naturally repaired them
again and again. When they were beyond repair, people found other uses for them.
One form of waste prevention, called source reduction, is a reduction in the quantity or the
toxicity of the material used for a product or packaging.