Improvement in resource allocation and operational efficiency in municipal solid waste management in Hyderabad
Student name: Mr Abhishek Suresh Pawar
Guide: Dr Lakshmi Raghupathy
Year of completion: 2017
Host Organisation: Waste Ventures India, Hyderabad
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Roshan Miranda
Abstract: The following project was carried out in city of Hyderabad. This was done to test
threshold of resources which were required to manage around 3.6 MT of
municipal solid waste from selected areas of Hyderabad. This was done in order
to check whether technology and infrastructure that exists in most of the places
in India is enough to pre-process the dry waste before sending it to recycling
facility or not.
This project was also done keeping in mind the existing network of rag-pickers
and scrap-dealers and leverage that for better management of dry waste. These
rag-pickers and small scale scrap dealers are spread all over Hyderabad city have
huge network in the scrap-market.
The plan was to leverage their network in some selected areas in the city and
encourage more people to segregate their waste at source. People were
incentivized for every stream of their dry waste if proper segregation was
assured. This not only ensured proper segregation at source, but also made it
easier for the central collection point to pre-process the waste before sending it to
the authorized recyclers.
It was not just scrap dealers who played major role here, but also the housing
societies who came up with strict rules in accordance with the solid waste
management rules 2016. This ensured most of the dry waste ended up in recycling
facility and not the dump-yard. This included campaigning, technical support,
initiation, workshops with the communities and most importantly, finding right
market for nuisance dry waste so that it has an added value in the chain. This study
shows how important it is to have a formal structure at bottom layer of value chain
of waste management and the role of technology and infrastructure for better
management of logistics and other resources for solid waste management.
