Urban solid waste management processes, implications, threats and opportunities: An overview on related issues and mitigation measures

Abstract

Most of the cities in Indian cities show inefficiencies in environmentally sound and sustainable waste management. An audit on the performance of municipal solid waste (MSW) management undertaken by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in 2007 revealed that no states have completed a comprehensive data about waste volumes and composition. As stated, priority of reducing, recycling and reusing waste have been largely ignored while municipalities focus instead on disposal. The formal waste management system in most of the cities is started from households and ends up in landfills. Due to the tremendous increase in MSW generation with the adequacy of the land occupancy will also be alarming in the future in India. Moreover, dumping of MSW by improper manner in surrounds creates nuisance to the locality, environment as well as human health. Therefore, this is utmost required that of the hour is to turn the best out of waste, therefore waste minimization with adequate techniques and technologies have to be adapted to the Indian conditions. It has been assessed that the energy generation potential from the MSW reaching landfills in Indian cities, four available technologies, namely biomethanation, incineration, refused derived fuel (RDF) and plasma arc gasification. The result shows that different technologies for harnessing the energy from the MSW have different potentials. It has been found that the most cost effective and highest energy generation potential in biomethanation technique which has the potential of energy generation of 133-166 GW in the year 2040, moreover this technique is most adequate with the MSW composition in India. © 2015 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.