How Waste Clinics Can Advance. Waste Management in Indian Cities. Lessons from municipalities in Uttar Pradesh. RMI Shweta Gautam, Videesha Velijala, Jyoti Bodas, and Tom Frankiewicz March 13, 2025 In India, waste generation levels are projected to rise from 62 million metric tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated annually to 436 million metric tons by 2050. With its Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, and its goal of “Garbage Free Cities,” within the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) 2.0, India has made sustainable waste management a national priority. However, MSW is often managed at the city level, and while many challenges of MSW management are handled by municipalities individually, working together presents opportunities to identify scalable solutions that can help cities meet national goals. Proper waste management is a key preventative measure for a range of issues: improperly collected, waste can spread disease and attract pests, it can also pollute the air, water, and soil. Even when taken to a landfill, waste can cause problems: when organic waste, like food waste, yard waste, paper, and cardboard decomposes in landfills, it releases a mixture of roughly half methane and half carbon dioxide, with trace amount of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen, ammonia and other VOCs called “landfill gas. During the clinic, experts presented a variety of topics:
- Sourabh Manuja, Waste Management Specialist, presented on waste characterization and source segregation to improve waste management.
- Varun Boralkar from Zigma-Blue Planet Group presented on biomining for dumpsite remediation.
- Syad Javed Ali Warsi, Independent Consultant, presented a case study on financing waste management in Indore.
These presentations were followed by two discussions. The first focused on solid waste management (SWM) challenges faced by cities within four priority areas, and the second focused on defining solutions for these challenges and organizing those solutions into a work plan.The priority areas, developed based on consultations with experts ahead of the clinic, were:
- Data collection: Gathering data for planning and monitoring
- Source segregation and collection of organic waste: Using separate bins and vehicles to collect organic waste at the source for resource recovery
- Organic waste treatment: Processing organic waste to recover resources
- Disposal: Landfilling non-useful waste while minimizing environmental and health impacts
To facilitate peer-to-peer learning, experts led discussions for each priority area at separate tables. City representatives identified the challenges they faced in each priority area as they rotated tables and discussed strategies to mitigate these challenges......read on https://rmi.org/how-waste-