]thethesis[: January 2016

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Costs and benefits of India's waste disposal options

downtoearth.org.in |

In December 2006, the Municipal Corporation of Kochi came up with a rather ingenious way of disposing its garbage loading it on to trucks and sending it to remote villages in neighbouring districts; even neighbouring states. A contractor was granted permission to transport the waste at the rate of Rs 1,365 a tonne. The municipal corporation didn't bother to ask the contractor about the dumping site, or whether he had obtained no-objection certificates from villages where the dumping was to happen.

India is planning to burn more of its trash to generate badly needed electricity. But as the case of a waste-to-energy plant in New Delhi shows, critics are worried about lax air pollution controls and the impact of incineration on people who eke out a living picking through waste dumps.

by david ferris

yale.edu |

For years, Sujata Das has started her workday by climbing to the top of the Okhla landfill in New Delhi to wait for the dump trucks. As they have rolled in and dispensed their loads, she and hundreds of other ragpickers have sifted through the garbage by hand, looking for plastic, paper, and scrap metal that could be sold for recycling. For her labors, Das used to earn about 5,000 rupees ($80) a month, enough to feed her three children and send them to school.

Then, two years ago, the contents of the dump trucks abruptly changed.

Can incinerators help manage India's growing waste management problem?

Hari Pulakkat, ET BureauApr 28, 2015, 10.12AM IST

timesofindia-economictimes |

The plant has been controversial right from the beginning, with residents complaining about foul smell and fly ash. It is run by the Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company (part of the Jindal Saw Group), and has the capacity to process about 1400 tonnes of waste per day. It was built at a cost of Rs 290 crore. The current Delhi government has promised closure of the plant, but things have not moved after chief minister Kejriwal's promise soon after he was sworn in. It is hard for the government to close the plant, as it would mean confronting an additional 1400 tonnes of garbage every day, apart from having to deal with other legal and administrative issues.