Municipal Solid Waste Management Essay

Municipal Solid Waste Management in India:

In India, according to the Ministry of Environment and Forests "municipal solid waste" includes commercial and residential wastes generated in municipal or notified areas in either solid or semi-solid form excluding industrial hazardous wastes but including treated bio-medical wastes. In simple words the municipal solid waste can be defined as the waste that is controlled and collected by local authority and municipality. Municipal Solid Waste Management in India falls under the public health and sanitation and hence as per the Indian Constitution is a State responsibility. This service has always been within the public domain until very recently, that the waste management services started being

Here the worker uses a pushcart with 6 drums for the separate collection of waste. The householder has to collect the dry waste in plastic bags and biodegradable waste in bins. The worker collects the waste and put it in separate bins. This is then transferred into large storage containers, which are designed as per the population density. The same system has been adopted in Chennai and Bangalore. In From these studies, it has been observed that the door to collection method has improved the efficiency of collection of segregated

Rag pickers mainly carry out the recycling process in India and they play a vital role in the economy of solid waste recycling process. They feed the need of the intermediary buyers, who, in turn, meet the demand of factories using recyclable solid waste as raw materials. However, the rag pickers do not have sufficient protection and are exposed to waste and sometimes even the hazardous waste present in MSW. A study carried out in 2003 has shown that 75 percent rag pickers have upper and lower respiratory symptoms. Even the quality of the successively recycled products in the informal sector in terms of their (i) physical appearance (ii) polymeric properties (iii) health hazards (for the recyclers and users of such products involved) are in serious question.

Another aspect to be noted is that plastic carry bags and PET do not figure in the list of priorities for rag pickers, because collecting them is not profitable. This is primarily because the rewards do not match the efforts required for collection, and this leads to plastic bags and PET continuing to pose a major threat to the