ANNOUNCEMENTS
With the increasing consumption pattern in urban centres the consequent waste generation is also increasing manifolds. The amount of waste generated cannot be approached with the narrow perspective of disposal at sites or dumping in landfills. The growing awareness of the need to reduce, reuse and recycle of waste at origin and its segregation is keeping city governments at the forefront of managing solid waste. This also allows focussed strategizing in ways to approach handling of waste at a localised level with sustainable methods such as composting or recycling. The Urban Local Body (ULB) of East Delhi, East Delhi Municipal Corporation with the Ghazipur landfill site under its jurisdiction area has taken cognizance of a more holistic approach to tackle waste. It has targeted 100% segregation of waste for three model wards, followed by 75% for six wards and 50% for 55 wards is a positive step in this direction.
Although the steps are initiated to allow decentralised treatment of waste, the challenge is massive at hand. It is to handle the existing legacy waste as well apart from the waste generated every day. The facilities that are involved in collecting, handling, processing and treating it are planned by the ULB throughout the 64 wards of East Delhi. Since the costs (financial, social, labour, environment etc.) associated with the collection and transportation are high ULB has aligned attention towards optimising the door-to-door collection component of SWM. The current national programs of Swachh Bharat Mission and Swachh Survekshan 2021 & 2022 have also stressed at the optimisation of different parts of door-to-door collection. One such major part of most of the indicators stated under Swachh Survekshan 2021 is the digitisation of the data concerning the waste handling. The assessment of the capacities of the systems of the infrastructure thus become crucial so that their optimisation could be effectively done through digital mechanisms. This study has aimed to bring forward the analysis of such capacities and possible areas of intervention for optimising the facility locations.
Key words: solid waste management, collection and transportation, optimisation of facilities.
