Midweek Musings 11, 18.02.2026 Solid Wase Management Guidelines

 Solid Wase Management Guidelines

Paper and packaging Ware, Glassware, manufactured / hazardous stuffs, and toilet wastes that can be incinerated ... are stashed away in colour coded containers as shown here in Germany - the leader in Solid Waste Management. 

By Malini Shankar

Digital Discourse Foundation

One of the greatest challenges of modern city management / governance is solid waste management. It can almost wholly be rooted to plastics mismanagement.

Although plastics less than 20 microns have been banned legally, it is practised most in the breach. This is perhaps due to lack of effective publicity for guidelines. Equally significant is the fact that packaging material have not been given policy guidelines. Lack of effective enforcement of laws is largely to blame too. Citizens’ lack of separation of wastes and their lack of knowledge seems to be another primary cause. The citizens’ lackadaisical approach to SWM (more in the breach) lacks penalties so it’s a vicious cycle. Only the erudite among the educated practise best practices of SWM.

Looks like people are unaware of the criticality of separation of wastes and politicians and Administrators wring their hands in despair, helplessly.  Once packaging material is standardised at 80 microns and policy regulates only non-plastic material has to be used for packaging the plastic menace will largely disappear. 80 microns or higher of plastic packaging ware can be effectively recycled.

Publicity / Awareness should be created about how to separate wastes:

Biodegradable compostable / wet wastes from the kitchen and garden should not be left for Pourakarmikas to clear from the street corner waste bins. If biodegradable wastes are taken care off at every 50 metres by composting then the burden on collection of wastes can be halved straight away. Recycling such separated recyclable plastics will further reduce it by half.

Citizens’ duties in SWM:

1.      Separate at source biodegradable wastes / composting wastes / wet wastes at home. To this category belongs kitchen wastes like vegetable and fruit peel, unused seeds, egg shells, tea and coffee discards, food wastes. Garden wastes like leaf litter, decaying barks. These when composted yield a high calorific value and adds to Soil Organic Carbon, helping in sequestering Carbon emissions, …or plainly put cools the top soil, helping in cooling ambient temperatures, - in mitigating global warming and Climate Change. So please, do your bit in maintaining civility in the city, in the process sequestering Carbon emissions and mitigating global warming. Even more critically, composting creates soil – thereby Land as a resource for human usage. If multi storeyed urban concrete jungles cannot spare space for composting it is another reason to stubbornly make space for setbacks and other civic amenities.

2.      Reduce usage of plastics and strive to use biodegradable wares as packaging material. Instead of plastic bags use cloth or jute bags.

3.      Reduce and minimalise use of one use plastics.

4.      Separate hazardous wastes like dyes, printer cartridges, inks, used / discarded batteries, spray cans, etc.

5.      Biomedical wastes like syringes, needles, swabs, cotton, medicines, tablet packaging strips tonics, iodine, tinctures etc… have to be incinerated in protected venues so that the noxious gases are collected and diffused scientifically.

6.      Then toilet wastes like discarded menstrual hygiene products, used condoms, used paper towels etc have to be incinerated, again with minimal pollution in controlled conditions so as to facilitate collection of pollutants which has to be discarded with eco sensitivity as per laid down environmental norms.

7.      This helps in reducing discardable wastes significantly.

Legislators’ Duties:

1.      Introduce significant, impact worthy fines for people who refuse to separate wastes. After slapping the fines, their photographs must be publicised and their name and address must be publicised; for as of now the educated and literate classes who refuse to separate wastes, are getting away scot-free.

2.      Even measures like street lamp cameras are not giving them the disdain they deserve. Pourakarmikas atleast in Bangalore were asked to throw back to the residents’ dwelling areas, unseparated wastes. This too did not help. Ad hoc measures as knee jerk reactions will not help. Home grown solutions too will not help. Strict standards of SWM and practise of SWM tenets only will help.

3.      Legislators must ensure that policy defines packaging material. No more plastic packaging material, even if its 100 microns and above. Starting from milk everything sold has to be in bio-degrable material only. Legislation must ensure that e commerce platforms conform to biodegradable packaging. E commerce platforms will mend their ways in conformance to legislation, not market demands. Consumers in India being so lackadaisical about plastics will not demand better packaging service from e commerce platforms.

Civic Authorities’ Duties:

1.      Theirs is the toughest duty. While gallant attempts have been made to appeal to separate wastes to collecting different kinds of wastes at different times / duties it remains a woefully inadequate affair. Unfortunate.

2.      Authorities must calibrate a per capita waste generation matrix.

3.      They must install colour coded bins for separate waste collection:  Biodegradable wastes / wet wastes / compostable wastes; packaging material; recyclable wastes; hazardous wastes; E Wastes; bio medical wastes; glassware; toilet wastes and incinerables;  

Community initiatives like making a space for community collection of biodegradable / wet wastes / compostables will be useful. Citizens, bureaucracy and Legislators must work as a team to make effective changes.