{"id":153856,"date":"2021-12-16T19:38:33","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T14:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=153856"},"modified":"2021-12-16T19:38:33","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T14:08:33","slug":"on-waste-management-zero-the-way-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/on-waste-management-zero-the-way-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"On waste management: Zero the way to go"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

News: <\/span><\/b>Although India\u2019s waste management policy has evolved to suit the changing needs but there are still some gaps. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Waste must become a resource that can be reworked, reused and upcycled. This will minimise the use of materials in our world and mitigate environmental damage.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the relation b\/w the nature of waste with a country\u2019s development status?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

Nature of waste changes as societies get richer and urbanize<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Firstly<\/span><\/i><\/b>, instead of biodegradable (wet) waste, households generate more plastic, paper, metal and other non-biodegradable (dry) waste. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Secondly<\/span><\/i><\/b>, the quantity of waste generated on per capita basis also increases.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How India’s waste management policy has evolved<\/span><\/b>?<\/span><\/h5>\n

Waste management in the 2000s revolved around collecting waste and dumping it outside the cities in landfills. <\/span>This led to heaps of waste in the outskirts of every major\/minor city of the country.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Current policy initiatives like Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) 2.0 focus on source segregation, processing of and on its minimization.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Only inert waste, which is not suitable for either dry or wet waste treatment, can be sent to landfill sites. And this should not be more than 20% of the total waste.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Note<\/strong>: Inert waste is the waste which is neither chemically nor biologically reactive and will not decompose or only very slowly. Example<\/b>: Sand and concrete.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Therefore, the premise of the guidelines is that cities must become zero-landfill i.e. they must recover and reprocess all waste.<\/p>\n

What should be the focus of future initiatives?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

1) Focus on segregation<\/span><\/b>– Segregation is very essential to ensure that <\/span>waste sent for incineration and energy generation is of high quality. It also results in<\/span> optimal working of waste to energy (WtE) plants.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2) Reclaiming landfill sites <\/span><\/b>-This valuable land can be greened and put to suitable use, which will also help avert environmental disasters. <\/span>Cities must also stop sending new waste to these landfills, otherwise they will get filled up again even while being remediated.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

3)<\/strong> Detailed strategies to reuse the material which will be biomined from these sites. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Biomining<\/span><\/b> is the technique of extracting metals from ores and other solid materials typically using prokaryotes, fungi or plants.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

4<\/strong>)<\/strong> T<\/span>he <\/span>practice of circular economy<\/span><\/b> needs to be followed wherein the focus is on <\/span>material recovery and reuse.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Circular economy<\/span><\/b> is “a model of production and consumption, which involves reusing, repairing, and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible”.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

5) Informal processing of waste<\/span><\/b>– Majority of waste processing happens through informal channels such as ragpickers. This should be formalised.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

6) Plastic waste<\/span><\/b> specially packaging waste has grown exponentially. This needs to be properly phased out. Although government has decided to phase put some of single use plastic, but this is not enough.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: <\/span><\/b>This post is based on the article <\/span>\u201cZero the way to go\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/b>published in\u00a0Down to earth<\/strong>\u00a0on<\/span> 15th<\/sup>\u00a0Dec 2021.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News: Although India\u2019s waste management policy has evolved to suit the changing needs but there are still some gaps. \u00a0 Waste must become a resource that can be reworked, reused and upcycled. This will minimise the use of materials in our world and mitigate environmental damage.\u00a0 What is the relation b\/w the nature of waste… Continue reading On waste management: Zero the way to go<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[10504,10514,216],"class_list":["post-153856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-down-to-earth","tag-dte","tag-gs-paper-3","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704824303},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}