Challenges and opportunities associated with waste management in India

India faces major environmental challenges associated with waste generation and inadequate waste collection, transport, treatment and disposal. Current systems in India cannot cope with the volumes of waste generated by an increasing urban population, and this impacts on the environment and public health. The challenges and barriers are significant, but so are the opportunities. This paper reports on an international seminar on ‘Sustainable solid waste management for cities: opportunities in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries’ organized by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and the Royal Society. A priority is to move from reliance on waste dumps that offer no environmental protection, to waste management systems that retain useful resources within the economy. Waste segregation at source and use of specialized waste processing facilities to separate recyclable materials has a key role. Disposal of residual waste after extraction of material resources needs engineered landfill sites and/or investment in waste-to-energy facilities. The potential for energy generation from landfill via methane extraction or thermal treatment is a major opportunity, but a key barrier is the shortage of qualified engineers and environmental professionals with the experience to deliver improved waste management systems in India

1. Introduction
Solid waste management (SWM) is a major problem for many urban local bodies (ULBs) in India, where urbanization, industrialization and economic growth have resulted in increased municipal solid waste (MSW) generation per person [1]. Effective SWM is a major challenge in cities with high population density. Achieving sustainable development within a country experiencing rapid population growth and improvements in living standards is made more difficult in India because it is a diverse country with many different religious groups, cultures and traditions.

Despite significant development in social, economic and environmental areas, SWM systems in India have remained relatively unchanged. The informal sector has a key role in extracting value from waste, with approximately 90% of residual waste currently dumped rather than properly landfilled [2]. There is an urgent need to move to more sustainable SWM, and this requires new management systems and waste management facilities. Current SWM systems are inefficient, with waste having a negative impact on public health, the environment and the economy [3]. The waste Management and Handling Rules in India were introduced by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) [4], although compliance is variable and limited.

This paper reviews the challenges, barriers and opportunities associated with improving waste management in India. It is the output from an international seminar on ‘Sustainable solid waste management for cities: opportunities in SAARC countries' organized by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-NEERI) and held in Nagpur, India in 2015. SAARC is the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

2. Waste generation in India
India is experiencing rapid urbanization while remaining a country with physical, climatic, geographical, ecological, social, cultural and linguistic diversity, as shown in table 1 [5]. The population of India was 1252 million in 2013, compared with 1028 million in 2001 [6]. Population growth is a major contributor to increasing MSW in India.