SWM, Public Health & the Human Development Index Almitra H Patel Member, Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste Management in Class 1 Cities in India almitrapatel@rediffmail.com

Poor Waste Mgt affects all 3 HDI criteria Longevity is affected by water-borne diseases (80% of infectious diseases) & fly-borne diseases from waste dumps. Knowledge & IQ are affected by careless disposal of hazardous domestic wastes like mercury in tube-lights, heavy-metal paints, pest sprays, PVC. Standard of Living is affected by needless waste-induced medical expenses, absenteeism, low productivity and a filthy unaesthetic environment which is nobody’s choice for a way to live.

Garbage caused Surat’s Plague Garbage choking storm drains and sewers caused flooding in the city. Floods brought the rats out of their burrows into the human population. “India is sitting on a time bomb” said Capt Velu. Hence our 2 Clean India Campaigns ’94-95. We visited 100 cities, all of them open-dumping just outside their city limits all over India. “Highways are the Garbage Map of India.”

Surat also showed that Cleanup is Possible in India Commissioner S R Rao changed India’s filthiest city to its cleanest one in just 18 months. He did this with Indian municipal laws, Indian city staff and workers, Indian public attitudes. So NO Indian city has any excuse for not cleaning up its act! Surat’s medical records showed a dramatic drop in all fly-borne and water-borne disease levels!

Did only Surat’s strong finances make this possible? NO ! Management is more important than money. Suryapet in AP, pop 1,03,000, is today a bin-less city, with source - segregated doorstep collection. It vermi - composts its wet waste, sorts & sells its dry waste, has spotless drains. Debris is collected SEPARATELY from garbage, so almost no land-filling is required.

Only Administrative Will is needed! Suryapet achieved Zero-Garbage status with NO external funding NO NGO help or organised rag-pickers. NO outside technical advice or consultants. It is a model today for other Indian towns. It shows what can be done when S A Khadar Saheb inspired his municipal team with FULL COOPERATION FROM THE COUNCIL. “Political infighting is injurious to your health.”

Big Cities can also achieve this Size is no excuse for non - performance. Each Ward is only half a Suryapet or less. SR Rao delegated Commissioner powers to six Zonal chiefs for rapid response & effective inter departmental coordination. For both Surat and Suryapet, a clean city was a top priority with clear objectives and specific achievement targets and timetables.

Waste Minimisation is the key MINIMISE INERTS IN WASTE : Debris, drain silt and road dust are 33% by weight of waste, 15% by volume of waste. Consider transport payment by volume or weight + volume. India’s 40-50% inerts in waste is by far the highest in SE Asia! NEVER collect kooda and malba in the same trip! Keep garbage and inerts unmixed. Inerts and plastics increase sieving costs for compost production. Composting can tolerate inerts, but why should farmers pay for urban indifference and accept a costlier product of poorer quality ?

Plastics are 7% by wt, 55% by volume of wet waste, making composting difficult. L: 1 shift compost prodn, Rt: waste plastic

Minimise Plastic Waste. Put it to use. Collection through school children keeps thin-film plastics + sachets out of domestic waste. A Salem school got 1.5 tons plastic in 10 days by giving 1 free pencil per kg of it. Coorg District was cleaned as class-wise sales of plastic funded Eco-Club activity. Replacing 10% bitumen with shredded plastic gives very superior low-maintenance roads. TN has 1200 km rural ‘plastic roads’ at no extra cost. Also clean villages, as SHGs were paid Rs 12/kg for shedded plastic from their area.

Minimise Wet Waste Volumes Delhi already has the answer since ’90s: Daily Sanitising of Dalaos. In a one-month demo at Nehru Place Dalao, instead of a truck emptying it daily, Excel sprayed it morning and evening with its composting biocultures. No odour, no flies, huge volume reduction : After 1 month, all waste went in 7 trucks! 22 truck trips saved per month at 1 dalao! (Hence no interest in implementation……)

Dalao Sanitising is Cost - Effective Dalao Sanitising is Cost - Effective! Saved Transport Cost pays for both Sanitising and Waste Processing. Unload this volume-reduced sanitised waste in wind-rows, turned weekly for maturing. Sanitising saves composting Time and Space. Minimise recycled organics at compost yard: MCD must use its own compost, like NDMC, or spread it over old dumps to green them. NO NEW PROCESSING & DISPOSAL SITES NEEDED!

Don’t think of Waste To Energy !! Mixed inerts make low - calorie waste. Can gobar - gas plants run on 50% soil instead of cowdung? Dec ‘04: Lucknow promoters “ran away” from a Rs 84 crore investment (mostly public money) “for want of suitable waste” for biomethana -tion. Took only 50 out of 1500 tons/day! Timarpur incinerator also closed after just Six Days, as high inerts and ash made waste “unsuitable”. Rs 41 crore + good site wasted.

Refuse Derived Fuel is a Myth It cannot be made from our high – inerts low calorie waste (1000kcal/kg vs 3500 reqd). So SAARC 2004 SWM Recomm is against WTE. Both Hyd & Vijaywada plants claim ‘success’ but actually run on 70-90% paddy-husk yet claim high power rates at consumers’ expense. Paddy husk for renewable energy is fine, but not on precious free land meant for city waste processing ! Now it is in short supply in AP.

Reclaim existing dump spaces by bio – treated wind - rowing, as at Mumbai’s Gorai, and Hyderabad. Mumbai reclaimed 1 hectare this way @ Rs 10/sft. Pile existing waste heaps into a high convex hill. Green it with a cover of this “bio-earth” + grass for recreation, as Stuttgart did for hang-gliding! Transporting inerts separately to other locations reduces transport and landfill costs and space. Preserve Bhatti Mines for ground-water-recharge!

Corruption is consuming most of our cities : Transport mafia, paid by weight, WANTS inerts in the garbage, ruining good use of both items. Horticulture: red earth + manure mafia resists use of city’s own compost for planting and greening. Contractors’ bitumen theft and road repair racket resists durable road specs using waste plastics. Let urban funding depend on a city’s performance in waste minimisation, recycling and reuse. PILE UP & PERISH or CLEAN UP & FLOURISH