The third largest city and the winter capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra, Nagpur is the 13th largest city by population in India. According to an Oxford Economics report, it is projected to be the fifth fastest growing city in the world from 2019-2035 with an average growth of 8.41% and a population of 4.3 Mio by 2041. It has been proposed as one of the Smart Cities in Maharashtra and is one of the top ten cities in India in Smart City Project execution. ("District Environment Plan, Nagpur", Maharashtra Pollution Control Board.)
Nagpur has some interesting firsts to its credit. According to a survey by ABP News-Ipsos, Nagpur was identified as the best city in India topping in liveability, greenery, public transport, and health care indices in 2013.The city was adjudged the 20th cleanest city in India and the top mover in the western zone as per Swachh Sarvekshan 2016. It was awarded as the best city for innovation and best practice in Swachh Sarvekshan 2018. It was also declared as open defecation free in January 2018 under Swachh Bharat Mission. It has been declared also as one of the safest cities for women in India. The city ranks 31st in Ease of Living index among 111 cities in India. It was ranked the 8th most competitive city in the country by the Institute for Competitiveness for the year 2017. ("Sustainable Solid Waste management, Case Study of Nagpur India" November 2020, International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology IJERT; C. B Patil and Dr Arif Khan)
Given its rapidly burgeoning population and its liveability, it is understandable then, why Nagpur with a total of 21 ULBs and 362 wards generates significant waste - 1200MTD - out of which dry waste is of 393.5MTD and wet waste is 655MTD. Plastic waste of 16 Mt daily is generated as part of overall domestic solid waste. And this can only increase many times given the overall growth projections of the city’s population.
In 2016 only 150 – 200 TPD of solid waste were being processed per day, out of the total 900 - 1000 TPD of waste generated, which created a significant gap (NEXUS giz Case Study: Integrated Solid Waste Management in Nagpur). The reasons for this gap were attributed to irregular collection services along with limited processing and disposal facilities leading to open dumping of waste, with significant environmental and health impacts. For example, door to door collection only covered 0.5 Mio households against a population of 2.5 Mio by a single private contractor (Kanak Resources management Ltd). Another private contractor had been commissioned to operate the waste processing and disposal facility at Bhandewadi. Despite that, only 150 – 200 TPD were being processed with the rest 800 TPD being dumped as is at the site. Over time, a build-up of 0.4 Mio TPD of waste was creating malodours, flies and leachate seeping into the ground contaminating the ground water and creating environmental and health hazards for the communities that lived in the area.
As part of the Smart cities program undertaken by the government through the Urban Nexus project, the city now claims to have implemented 100% door to door collection of domestic solid waste across all 21 ULBs. Though, mechanical sweeping of the public areas still needs to be upgraded, with only a few ULBs having installed this facility and the rest still adhering to manual sweeping. While there is little source segregation of waste by generators, door-to-door collectors do segregate high value recyclables such as plastics, metals, papers, etc.
To transport the waste, the state government has provided 172 trolleys, 489 mini trucks and 77 bulk trucks. The question is, are these enough and is the process they have adopted for collection and transportation a sustainable one for the future? It is known that the door-to- door collection facilities do not cover the outer city areas and a few congested localities in the city.
Once waste is collected, it is transported to 37 waste transfer points provided by the city with Domestic Hazardous Waste being transported to 18 waste deposition centres. A total of 24 plastic waste collection centres have been built to manage and process plastic waste supported through 263 plastic waste pickers, 247 plastic waste recyclers and 10 plastic manufacturers, who buy the recycled plastic. Of the plastic that is not recyclable, 244.8 Mt per month is sent for co-processing in cement kilns and 1 Mt per month is used in road processing.
The transfer points act as material recovery facilities (MRFs) for the waste where segregation, sorting and bundling of different types of waste is carried out. Some of them provide composting units as well for most of the wet waste collected (174) and 8 of them have bio methanation facilities added.
As can be surmised from the above situation, given all its benefits as the most liveable city in India, Nagpur’s waste problems are far from resolved. While SWM has historically always been a government problem, resolution of the city’s waste management challenges in today’s context has to be dealt with both by the local government as well as civil society.
Starting with segregation at source to littering in public areas or misuse of public waste management infrastructure, all these are civic responsibilities and should carry significant penalties when observed. Enforcement of these penalties is also a civic responsibility and should be supported by the communities that get impacted. ULBs and communities should come together to design and implement a SW segregation program incorporating zone wise penalties based on economic viability. In this manner, there will be a citywide understanding of the SW segregation rules citizens are expected to adhere to.
Secondly, the waste collection cycle should be standardised across the city specifically keeping in mind heavily congested areas given their propensity to generate more waste. Here again, penalties should be instituted for non-conformance with the ULB concerned ensuring wide advocacy prior to implementation. Public private partnerships should also be explored to manage this part of the SWM value chain giving the opportunity to establish small MSMEs to manage the process on a commercial basis.
Finally, the facilities at the WTPs for sorting, segregation and reprocessing should include all types of waste – domestic including plastic, industrial and hazardous. Currently, these are all separate sites, which means additional transportation and segregation facilities to be developed and managed, higher costs and finally limited streamlining of the end-to-end SWM value chain.
The optimum design of a WTP is dependent on the land available as well as the ability of the ULB to provide the manpower and infrastructure to support the facilities. Proven successes around WTPs being managed under a public private partnership mode should be actively considered by the city administration thus creating opportunities for small business ventures as well as alternative livelihoods for manual scavengers and other sanitation workers.
A sustainably clean city is one where the local government comes together with the communities that live therein to design and implement a waste management program that works for all, and which carries equal accountability for both citizens as well as its administrators. Nagpur’s pursuit of a sustainably clean city for the future is on track – it needs to ensure rapid closure of the existing gaps before 2030.
Blog writer: Natasha Patel, CEO, India Sanitation Coalition