Sustainable waste management: a case study in Guwahati

The environmental threat to humanity due to unscientific and unhealthy disposal of waste is increasing day by day. Urban sprawl due to population growth combined with changing consumer habits have increased the per capita generation of waste over the years. This has made the task of Solid Waste Management even more challenging for Municipal Corporations. The key issues surrounding garbage collection and disposal are similar in major cities and towns of India, Guwahati being a typical example of the lot. Technology available in developed countries is hard to implement in India in this sector due to funds limitation, different demographic profile of users, general education and awareness level in the community regarding waste, cost of running sophisticated waste plants, associated infrastructure required to support the system and also the extent and character of the waste to be managed. Cities in developing countries hardly spend more than 0.5% of their per capita gross national productivity (GNP) on urban waste services, which covers only about one-third of overall cost. Under these stringent budgets and complex problems to deal with, it is vital to devise ways which would strike a balance between the cost effectiveness and the quality of the waste management process. Implementation of waste management with proper segregation and supporting technologies for processing the recyclables can go a long way in minimizing the energy consumed for manufacturing. The segregation process when done efficiently produces cleaner recyclables which has a better market value and lesser energy consumption in its life cycle from generation at source to a finished product and can be a sustainable solution to waste management. In this paper municipal waste collection at source using different types of waste receptacles have been experimented. A resident colony in Guwahati city was selected and 50 households were randomly selected for the study for 90 days. Two bin system and a designed segregation bin system were experimented. Data was compared using SPSS. It was found that the contamination level was low in the biodegradable and non biodegradable waste in the designed segregation bin system. It was also found that there was an improvement in the quantity of biodegradable and non biodegradable waste. Segregation at source if practiced could lead to zero waste locality with an economic viability.