Population, Waste and Sanitation

In one line

Waste generation has grown with population and with income while collection, transport and processing have not, and the difference is the dumpsite and the untreated sewage in the river.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the waste problem is a function of population, urbanisation and income together, since generation per person rises with income and concentration rises with urbanisation. Municipal solid waste is regulated by rules made under section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, and its management is a municipal function under the Twelfth Schedule. Untreated municipal sewage is the largest single source of pollution in Indian rivers, exceeding industrial effluent, and the Water Act's technique of consent and closure cannot reach a municipality.

The two streams

Municipal solid waste

The chain. Generation, segregation at source, collection, transport, processing by composting or recovery or waste to energy, and finally scientific landfill of the residue only.

Where it breaks. Segregation at source is where the whole chain begins and where it usually fails, because it depends on every household. Without segregation, organic waste, recyclables and hazardous items are mixed, and mixed waste cannot be composted or recycled economically, so it goes to a dump.

The dumpsite. The default. An open dump produces leachate that contaminates groundwater, methane that is a greenhouse gas and a fire risk, and disease vectors, and it occupies land that cannot be used again.

The rules. Made under section 3 of the Act of 1986. The municipal solid waste rules of 2000, which came out of the litigation described below, were replaced by the solid waste management rules of 2016, which extend to more categories of generator, require segregation into wet, dry and domestic hazardous waste, and impose duties on bulk generators.

Sewage

The fact to state. Untreated municipal sewage exceeds industrial effluent as a source of pollution in Indian rivers, on the Central Pollution Control Board's own assessment. Most answers assume the opposite, and the assumption drives the wrong recommendation.

Why the gap exists. Sewage treatment capacity has never matched generation, and where capacity exists it is often not operated, because operation costs money and there is no consequence for not operating it.

Why the law cannot reach it. The Water Act 1974 works by consent and by closure under section 33A. A Board can close a factory. It cannot close a city, and prosecuting a municipal commissioner does not produce a treatment plant.

And the river programmes are Plan schemes, not statutory ones, so their failure is a failure of expenditure rather than of law.

The litigation

Facts. Almitra H. Patel v. Union of India, AIR 2000 SC 1256, concerned solid waste in Delhi: garbage and untreated domestic and industrial waste freely dumped into the Yamuna or left on open land, with the citizens increasingly suffering respiratory and other disease. The Court had constituted a committee to examine urban solid waste management.