A Framework for Assessment of Existing Solid Waste Management Practices and Characterization of Municipal Solid Waste in Muzzafarnagar City, India

Introduction

Rapid rise in India’s economy due to increased urbanisation and globalization and thereby changing lifestyle coupled with increasing population (births, migration etc.) has led to production of eight fold increase in MSW generation in comparison to 1947 (Sharholy et al, 2008; Talyan et al, 2008) leading to severe degradation of existing environmental conditions (Hazra et al, 2009). With the passage of time it is expected that Indian population will increase further with the annual rate of growth of urban population in India being predicted at 5% (“Census of India”, 2011). Further, rapid influx of population from rural areas in urban cities lead to unwanted population growth leading to development of unplanned rural areas in the outskirts of the Indian cities leading to additional generation of MSW which are often unaccounted. In general, waste is defined as a material of unuseful nature and of no economic value to its owner, the owner being the generator of the waste (Mor et al, 2006b). Effective management of MSW is a global problem with developing countries facing the biggest obstacles (Ramachandra et al, 2003; Tchobaanpoglous et al, 1993). It has been inferred that increasing population is directly related to rapid increase in MSW generation in developing countries with India being no exception and might be reaching critical levels particularly due to unavailability of barren land for disposal (Indris et al, 2004; Talyan et al, 2008).The per capita waste generation of India rate varies between 0.15 kg in rural areas to 0.45 kg in urban areas (Akhtar, 2014; Katiyar et al, 2013) and it has been observed that increased economic success leads to increased per capita consumption and generation of MSW (Taylan et al, 2007; Tricys, 2002). The average per capita waste generation in India is 370 g/day as compared to 2200 g/day in Denmark, 2000 g/day in US and 700 g/day in China (Liu et al, 2011).

In an Indian context, the MSW can be classified primarily as the solid waste generated from domestic, commercial, institutional sources and to a lesser extent biomedical and industrial (toxic waste). The most prevalent method for disposal of such wastes in India are open dumping (90%) which over the period of time leads to choking of sewer pipes, breeding grounds for vectors and other serious heath hazardous and environmental problems. Such status of MSW disposal is regularly observed for Tier-II and Tier-III cities. In Tier-I and metropolitan cities some of which have implemented management strategies for tackling such huge voluminous quantities the procedures implemented have been outdated and inefficient due to lack of characterization studies which would have enabled these municipalities in implementing an effective treatment and disposal system. For example, it is estimated that about 1.3 million cubic metre of biogas per day or 72 MW of electricity from biogas can be produced for agricultural purposes along with about 5.4 million metric tonnes of compost annually (“Central Pollution Control Board”, 2015). However, due to improper MSW management practices including no segregation of wastes being followed the end products of several waste to energy (WTE) systems implemented are poor in nature with no economic value (Rana et al, 2015).