Door-to-Door Waste Management with People’s Help

1. Door-to-Door Waste Management with People’s Help Mrs Almitra H Patel, Member Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste Management in Class 1 Cities in India almitrapatel@rediffmail.com

2. The best way to keep streets clean is not to dirty them at all.Start with DIRTIEST AREAS FIRST!Focus: Remove one ‘dark spot’ per Ward per week.Use media to Highlight Successes.

3. So the law of the land now is: daily doorstep collection of wet wastes for composting, dry wastes given separately

4. DO NOT MIX “wet” kitchen waste separate, and “dry” recyclables: paper, plastic, cloth

5. Citizens can help by keeping “dry” waste out of kitchen waste

6. Only kitchen wastes need daily collection, in our climate.‘Dry’ wastes can be collected weekly, as we save newspapers and bottles. Thin plastic can be stored in a bag on the wall. Rajasthan towns can and should pass rules for this: daily collection only of UNMIXED kitchen waste, flower and fruit waste and biodegradables. That is how wastes can be minimised.

7. Keep SEPARATE TIMINGS for collecting ‘wet’ & ‘dry’ wastes Citizens cooperate very well if: • Timings are Punctual and Regular • They SEE their Unmixed ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ being transported separately • There is a Hot-line for problem-solving and airing grievances • There is some Reward for Good Behaviour

8. Kitchen waste is low in volume. It can be composted at home

9. Or collected door-to-door at fixed times from each area.

10. Take only the kitchen waste to a ‘bio-bin’ for local composting

11. This Chembur bio-bin replaced an overflowing dumper placer. Now residents grow a garden to keep that same area clean.

12. This bin serves 126 households and provides additional income to 3 persons for 1 hour a day work: 1 collects, 1 cleans drains, 1 manages the bio-bin, 1 is a mali. Compost is ready in a month for use.

13. The compost is used for street beautification, even in very little spaceand has improved property values.

14. ‘Mera Aangan Saaf’ policy keeps drains clean, prevents flooding and saves desilting costs too.

15. Decentralised composting & mali costs are easily met from savings in transport. We must share these savings? How? 1/3 to local composting community to spend at their discretion for street lights, potholes or reduce their monthly contribution costs. 1/3 to LSG to pay for more such bio-bins, esp. in ‘unmanned’ areas. 1/3 in future to transporters who cooperate in unloading only wet waste in local bio-bins?

16. Park and Garden wastes can be composted on-site or used as fuel or sent to cremation grounds

17. Market waste is easy to compost or vermi-compost, as here in a Mumbai pumping-station space.

18. “Dry” recyclable waste can be collected weekly in larger carts

19. Moholla or City must provide space for Collecting and Storing “dry” recyclable wastes

20. Also space to collect truckloads of dry waste for shipment out

21. Otherwise it will encroach on roads or even riverbeds

22. MINIMISE WASTE TO LANDFILLS, which are costly to prepare and to operate! City and State should have targets, like EU, for annual reductions of waste transported. Reduce present 470 grams per capita to 200, then 100, then 50. Landfills cannot be eliminated but one can try for Zero Waste, like Suryapet in AP, which DOES NOT MIX MALBA WITH KOODA

23. MINIMISE TRANSPORT COSTS! INERTS like construction waste, naali and drain silt, road diggings and sweepings mustnever be mixed with garbage. So PAY by VOLUME, NOT by WEIGHT! Collect INERTS IN A SEPARATE TRIP for useful disposal: ravine-filling, gully-plugging, flood-control, road shoulders.

24. PAYMENT BY WEIGHT COSTS CITY & TAX-PAYERS TWICE OVER! It encourages mixed transport which makes composting difficult and RDF a failure. Another cost for needless expensive filling of landfill with mixed inerts instead of using them. If landfill cover is needed, TRANSPORT & STOCKPILE INERTS SEPARATELY ON SITE for daily cover. For final cover, mix compost rejects with soil to support vegetation.