Cluster Based Integrated Solid Waste Management

iSWM

Employment Resource Recycle Energy

iSWM- Integrated Solid Waste Management

Index

Project Objectives Introduction Present Scenario iSWM- Integrated Solid Waste Management Core Idea Brief Summary Benefits of iSWM Costs Involved Sites Identified

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

1. To form a consortium between Civic Agencies/Waste Management Companies, NGOs and Recyclers to efficiently and effectively manage municipal solid waste. 2. To create employment opportunities for locals in the field of waste management and recycling sector. 3. To achieve zero waste to landfill from household through de-centralized integrated solid waste management program. 4. To make consortium self sustainable for future waste management challenges. 5. To involve NGOs working for social uplifting and self empowerment of the poor.

INTRODUCTION:

Rapid population growth, urbanization and industrial growth have led to severe waste management problems in the cities of developing countries like India. The large quantity of waste generated necessitates a system of collection, transportation, segregation, recycling and disposal. In India, the collection, transportation and disposal of MSW are unscientific and chaotic. Uncontrolled dumping of wastes on outskirts of towns and cities has created overflowing landfills, which are not only impossible to reclaim because of the haphazard manner of dumping, but also have serious environmental implications in terms of ground water pollution and contribution to global warming. In the absence of waste segregation practices, recycling has remained to be an informal Sector working on outdated technology, but nevertheless thriving

owing to waste material Availability and market demand of cheaper recycled products. Paper and plastic recycling have been especially growing due to continuously increasing consumption levels of both the commodities. It requires knowledge of what the wastes are comprised of, and how they need to be collected and disposed. Recycling of waste, energy generation and employment opportunities from waste management also have immense potential. Successful waste management requires the participation of citizens, local governments, and private entrepreneurs. The increase in the population and rapid income growth in India has changed the lifestyle of urban residents, thus changing the composition of the garbage generated. The presence of paper, plastic and metal is on the rise, resulting in more disposal difficulty. Municipalities have not been able to collect and dispose off the enormous quantity of waste being generated, un-planned secondary collection, transportation and lack of adequate landfill sites add to the difficulties faced by municipalities. Scavengers and rag pickers have helped the corporations with the collection of the garbage generated, since they collect it from households to garbage dumps and carry out the important function of waste segregation, however such practices are only limited to a few cities. Waste management and disposal is a pressing issue India is facing today, since about 90% of waste is currently disposed of by open dumping. Some commonly used methods by which the waste generated is being managed are: incineration, land filling and composting. However, these methods are inefficient and harm the environment.

Present Scenario:

Studies conducted suggest India generate about 100,000 Tons Per Day(Year 2005) of Municipal solid waste. Per capita generation of waste varies from 200 gm to 600 gm per capita / day. Average generation rate at 0.4 kg per capita per day in 0.1 million plus towns. Following is the breakup of waste generation data, classifying MSW generation in 3 main groups:

Note: Mega cities are above 4 million population and metro cities (also known as million plus cities) are the same as the identified cities under the proposed JNNURM (Table A1.1). Class 1 cities with population in the 100,000 to 1 million range are 388 in number. Source: MOUD (2005)

In India, the community bin collection system is the main practice used for waste collection. In this system, residents deposit their waste into the nearest community bins located at street corners at specific intervals (NEERI Report, 2005). Waste segregation at the source is minimal. Segregation of MSW into dry and wet wastes is carried out only in limited areas of a few cities, and in these areas, separate containers are used for collection of dry and wet wastes. Waste generated in households is generally accumulated in small containers (often plastic buckets) and then disposed of into community bins. Containers for household storage of solid wastes are of many shapes and sizes, and are fabricated from a variety of materials. Residents usually store waste in 1620 l plastic buckets. The type of container generally reflects the economic status of the waste generator. The containers generally are constructed of metal, concrete, or a combination of the two. Various types of community bins, such as RCC bins, masonry bins, metallic containers, and plastic containers, are used in India, although RCC and masonry bins are being gradually phased out. Metallic containers of 4.56 m3 capacity are now being promoted in various cities. These containers are carried to the disposal site by dumper placers, and after discharging the material at the disposal site, the containers are placed back in their original positions. This system avoids double handling of waste. House-to-house collection is becoming common in India, except for in a few cities. In those cities that use house-to-house collection, handcarts and tricycles are used for waste collection from individual houses at a specific time in the morning, when residents deposit the stored waste into the handcarts. Sometimes a bell is attached to the handcarts to alert the citizens. The waste in the handcarts is either transferred to community bins or directly

transferred to vehicles going to the disposal site. Recent legislation emphasizes the house-to-house collection system, and it is expected that this collection method will be promoted as an improvement to the existing system in various cities and towns. Street sweepings are also collected in the community bins along with domestic waste. Corporate staff sweeps the road and collect the waste in handcarts and baskets, which are emptied into the community bins. Community storage may reduce the cost of waste collection and can minimize problems associated with lack of on-site storage space. However, unless these community storage arrangements are conveniently located, householders tend to throw their waste into the roadside gutters for clearance by street sweeping crews. Even where storage arrangements are conveniently located, waste tends to be strewn around the storage area, partly due to lack of discipline and partly as a result of scavenging by rag pickers and stray animals. Due to the absence of adequate storage capacity for generated refuse and poor discipline among the generators, waste is also continually dumped on the road (Bhoyar et al., 1996). In a country like India, collection methods are based mostly on manual labour, which is less costly than the mechanized collection systems adopted in developed countries. Commercial sectors, such as shops, offices, and hotels, also use the community waste bin system, and their waste is also collected along with household waste except in a rare number of commercial complexes, which pay a negotiated fee to the municipal authorities for collecting waste from their premises. Most of the shops do not open before 9 AM and so do not put their waste out on the street, as it would then be left until the next days collection. The following deficiencies have been observed in the storage and collection of MSW: _ Sweeping and collection implements are poorly designed. _ Dustbins are not emptied regularly. _ RCC bins and metallic containers are in broken or bad condition in many places. _ Scattered waste causes choking of drains. _ The number of bins is inadequate.

_ There are no separate bins for collection of litter. Different types of vehicles, varying from bullock carts to compactors, ordinary trucks, tractor and trailers, dumper placers, and tippers, are used for waste transportation. However, general-purpose open body trucks of 59 ton capacity are in common use. In smaller towns, tractortrailers are used despite being noisy and inefficient. In a few cities, compactor vehicles are also being used. It has been observed that many of the vehicles have outlived their normal lives, resulting in high fuel consumption and low efficiency. Municipal corporations employ staff and vehicles for clearing the community bins. The waste is loaded into the vehicles from the community bins by the corporation staff. Finally, the waste is transferred to the disposal site. The metallic containers are directly carried by the dumper placer for unloading at the disposal site. The waste is transported mostly by municipal vehicles, although, in some large towns, private vehicles are also hired to augment the fleet. Vehicle maintenance is carried out in a general municipal workshop along with other municipal vehicles where the refuse vehicles receive the least priority. Most of these workshops have facilities for only minor repairs. Although preventive maintenance is necessary to maintain the collection fleet in proper operating condition, preventive maintenance is commonly neglected. Transfer stations are in place in only a few metropolitan cities (Joseph, 2002). To improve conservancy operations, authorities feel that a lack of civic awareness among city residents is proving to be a major hurdle in maintaining the cleanliness of the city. The problem is most acute in slums and in low and middle income areas. It will be nearly impossible for the civic body to provide better surroundings if residents do not make an effort to deposit waste into the bins and stop the practice of throwing garbage onto the road (Joseph, 2002). A conservancy worker needs to cover a certain area by a specific time. If garbage is distributed all along the road by the public, the conservancy worker cannot cover the complete area assigned and hence some areas may not be covered on somedays. Because of the poor conditions for temporary

storage of wastes, non-government organizations (NGOs) have been involved in some areas to make arrangements for household waste collection, which has led to improvement in local street cleanliness (Shekdar, 1999).

Processing of waste:
Generally no processing of municipal solid waste is done in the country. Only a few cities have been practicing decentralized or centralized composting on a limited scale using aerobic or anaerobic systems of composting. In some towns un-segregated waste is put into the pits and allowed to decay for more than six months and the semi-decomposed material is sold out as compost. In some large cities aerobic compost plants of 100 MT to 700 MT capacities are set up but they are functioning much below installed capacity. A few towns are practicing vermi-composting on a limited scale.

Segregation:
In the waste stream, biodegradables are present along with recyclable items such as plastic, metal, glass, and paper. Several thousands of urban dwellers in India are employed in many small industries for the recovery of plastics, tin cans, bottles, bones, hair, leather, glass, and metal from MSW. All metals, unsoiled paper, plastics, glass, cardboard, etc. are readily marketable and are therefore recycled by householders themselves or by rag pickers. However, biodegradables are not fully utilized. Segregation of recyclables (i.e., paper, cardboard, and plastics) by rag pickers was observed to be practiced in 22 cities. Rag pickers were not observed in cities like Kolkata, Chennai, Surat, Kanpur, Coimbatore, Kochi, Vasakhapattanam, and Panjim. In a few cities, NGOs were observed to be involved in the collection of waste through the services of rag pickers. Proper segregation of waste would lead to better options and opportunities for its scientific disposal. (Singhal and Pande, 2000).

Presently waste management practices followed in India concentrate on secondary collection, Transportation of waste and disposal. Not much is being done in the field of MSW segregation and recycling. Planned integrated MSW management can not only divert majority of waste entering the landfill but also create employment opportunities and revenue streams.

iSWM- Integrated Solid Waste Management:

Developing country like India, face uphill challenges to properly manage their waste with most efforts being made to reduce the final volumes and to generate sufficient funds for waste management. If most of the waste could be diverted for material and resource recovery, then a substantial reduction in final volumes of waste could be achieved and the recovered material and resources could be utilized to generate revenue to fund waste management. This forms the premise for Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) system based on 3R (reduce, reuse and recycle) principle. Developing and implementing ISWM requires comprehensive data on present and anticipated waste situations, supportive policy frameworks, knowledge and capacity to develop plans/systems, proper use of environmentally sound technologies, and appropriate financial instruments to support its implementation. Generation-based Integrated Solid Waste Management The second concept of ISWM is based on its generation from different sources including domestic, commercial, industrial and agriculture. This waste could be further classified as hazardous and non-hazardous waste. The former has to be segregated at source and treated for disposal in accordance with the strict regulations. 3R approach (reduce, reuse and recycle) is applicable both at source as well as at the different levels of solid waste management chain including collection, transportation, treatment and disposal.

Core Idea
In this paper we propose to setup a self sustainable consortium between Civic Agencies/Appointed Waste Management Companies, NGOs and Recyclers to manage municipal solid waste (MSW) generated from households on daily basis. The proposal is to create a multi branch tree which will provide for a better management and use of MSW as a resource instead of mere waste. All the material extracted will be channeled out to appropriate agencies for proper recycling and end of life use. Purpose of this consortium will be to promote an area decentralized and agency (civic agencies, NGOs and recyclers) integrated Solid waste management.

This model is designed to recover Re-usable material from the waste stream and recycle it for resource recovery before final disposal, thus reducing significant amount of waste entering landfill and increasing its life span by almost 2 times on an average. The objective is to work closely and in association with existing body appointed for Collection, Transportation and Disposal of MSW, proposed plan is to recover recyclables and use organic waste to generate cooking Gas/PNG and reducing the inflow of waste entering landfill by an average of 60-80 %. Composition of Municipal solid waste may vary from city to city, however Indian MSW consist of 60-80% reusable material by weight, including organic waste.

MSW in India has following mix waste material: Organic fraction (food waste, yard waste etc.), paper, plastic, metals, glass, rubber, leather, debris & fines.

Project aim is to design an area de-centralized and process integrated solid waste management facility for an efficient and scientific handling of MSW, with step-by-step manual cum mechanical segregation and recycling system, first recyclables and non-recyclables will be separated from municipal solid waste and further the non recyclables into organic fraction and in-organic fraction (inert and debris etc.) Recovered recyclables will be further sorted to recover mix paper, mix plastics & mix metals from MSW. Recovered Mix paper will be sent out to associated NGOs for manually sorting paper into different recyclable grades, sorted paper can be sold to a paper recycler or can be recycled in-house by the NGO using a small scale manually operated paper recycling plant hence generating substantial employment opportunities for the locals in recycling sector. Paper recycling plant use boilers to convert paper into pulp fiber, boilers are either electrical or powered by gas. Organic waste recovered from municipal solid waste can be treated using either existing compost plant or it can be converted to cooking gas using waste to cooking gas generators, these generators use bio-reactors and microbes to convert organic waste to BIO-CNG/PNG/Cooking Gas GCG on daily basis. We wish to use in-house gas made from organic fraction of MSW using wasteto-gas generator to power boilers used in recycling paper, hence eliminating two major cost in paper recycling, cost of energy and cost of recovered paper. Recycled paper can be used by NGOs to further manufacture stationery or it can be sold in domestic market.

Some Social and Economic Benefits of recycling paper 1) Recycling will help local industries grow and will also bring in more employment. 2) There is 28 - 70 percent less energy consumption in producing recycled paper compared to virgin paper. Every ton of recycled paper saves approximately four barrels of oil, 4200 kilowatt hours of energy and enough energy to heat and air-condition the average North American home for almost six months. (South Carolina Electric & Gas Company. 1991. Recycle Save Energy.) 3) There is also less water usage. This is because most of the energy used in papermaking is required for the pulping needed to turn wood into paper 4) Using recycled paper reduces the need for primary raw materials Recovered plastic and metals can be sold to CPCB registered recyclers for their proper recycling and disposal. By recycling and reusing organic waste, paper, plastic and metal fractions from MSW we can reduce volume and weight of waste to be land filled by 6080%, reduced waste inflow by 60-80% can increase the life span of a city landfill by almost 2-3 times, for example if life of a particular landfill is estimated to be 25 years it can be increased to about 50-75 years by implementing integrated solid waste management system. Resource recovery from MSW and recycling will create employment opportunities and revenue source for local population.

Brief process description is given below:

A defined collection system is must for a successful solid waste management, in India three type of collection system exist collection done by Municipalities, waste management companies and NGOs. Collection of waste can be done through existing infrastructure or with the help of an NGO/Waste management company. Primary House hold collection is done on daily bases; collection is done by either Safai Karamchari or workers appointed by waste management companies/NGOs. After daily collection the waste is dumped at a common bin from where it is transported to city landfill for final dumping. iSWM (integrated Solid Waste Management) system is designed for resource recovery from MSW, We plan to treat MSW before it reaches city landfill by recovering organic fraction and recyclables from it. Organic fraction and recyclables from municipal solid waste can be recovered using near infrared spectroscopy and other processing technology, recyclables recovered can be further sorted into mix paper, mix plastic and mix metals. Mix paper can be further sorted into 3 main types; 1. brown paper/cardboard 2. white paper/newspaper 3. printed paper/magazines etc. Paper sorting can be done manually with the help of an NGO, sorting of paper and recycling can open up employment opportunities and can also be considered as one of the major revenue source for NGO and the workers involved.

NGO can also use sorted recovered paper to manufacture recycled paper stationary which will further improve revenue source and increase direct employment generation. Recovered organic fraction from MSW can be used in waste to cooking gas generator which can convert organic waste into high calorific value cooking gas GCG. In-house Cooking gas can be used to power boilers used for recycling paper or can be bottled and sold as regular cooking gas. Paper recycling from waste paper recovered from MSW can; 1) Open up employment opportunities in recycling sector for locals. 2) Gives an advantage to NGO as it can stay price competitive in the market as raw material and energy cost is almost zero. 3) Promote social up liftment of the poor. 4) Every ton of newspaper stack recycled can save 17 trees. 5) Disposal problems are reduced by using waste paper to produce new paper. For every ton of paper used for recycling, the savings are: At least 30000 liters of water. 3000-4000 KWh electricity Presently India imports 40% of recovered paper used in manufacturing of paper sold in domestic market, domestic paper manufacturers prefer using imported recovered paper over the domestic waste paper because of the poor quality and irregular supply. Mix waste plastic and mix waste metals recovered from MSW, can be sold to respective recyclers. Revenue from sale of cooking gas GCG produced using organic waste fraction of MSW, sale of sorted paper waste/recycled paper products, sale of mix plastics and metals can make it a self sustainable solid waste management model.

Cluster based integrated solid waste management: proposed plant.

An average 50 ton/day MSW recycling facility can produce following environmental, economic and social benefits; 1. It can recover 315 tons of paper/month, which saves 1700 trees and save 135000 kWh of energy used to produce virgin paper. 2. It can recover approximately 150 tons of plastics/month and save 866100 kWh of energy. 3. It can reuse 480 tons of organic waste to produce 21000 cubic meters of cooking gas in a month. 4. Collection, segregation and recycling of a 50 ton/day waste management facility can create 250-300 job opportunities. 5. Revenue from recovered material will make it a self sustainable solid waste management model. 6. By diverting 60-80 % reusable waste from entering landfill can increase its estimated life span by 2-3 times.

Benefits for NGO

1. iSWM promote efficient and effective management of resources present in our waste, from organic waste to recyclables. iSWM program is designed to benefit people responsible for collecting and managing waste, Rag pickers, poor working in coordination with the NGOs, NGOs themselves. 2. Apart from increase in the revenue from waste, NGOs will also have opportunities to create more employment in solid waste management sector. 3. Present practices and the number of agents involved in trading of waste leads to its unfair increase in price. More over poor practices followed to process and store the waste at various different levels before it is recycled are unsatisfactory, which leads to quality degradation of recyclables and restrict its application to low value products hence failing to put the resources to their optimum use. This program is designed to efficiently manage resources recovered from waste and create better opportunities for people responsible for collecting them in the first place.

Benefits for the government: 1. iSWM project can help civic agenesis dump less of city waste in the landfill. Facility is planned to treat household waste and promote Zero waste to landfill model. 2. On successful recovery of resources from waste through iSWM, about 60-80% of waste entering landfill can be treated. 3. On diverting 60-80 % of waste from entering the landfill its life span can be increased by 2-3 times. 4. Resource recovery through iSWM can open up substantial employment opportunities for local people in the area.

5. Through iSWM organic fraction from MSW can be treated to produce cooking gas on daily basis. 6. iSWM will create social, economical and environmental benefits in the area.

Following sites identified as most ideal for this program;

According to a report published by CPCB and NEERI, segregation of recyclables (i.e., paper, cardboard, and plastics) by rag pickers was observed to be practiced in 22 cities. Rag pickers were not observed in cities like Chandigarh, Chennai, Surat, Kanpur, Coimbatore, Kochi, Vasakhapattanam and Panjim. In a few cities such as Pondicherry, Gangtok etc, NGOs were observed to be involved in the collection of waste through the services of rag pickers. Proper segregation of waste would lead to better options and opportunities for its scientific disposal. Based on above facts we have decided to concentrate on cities where either NGOs are involved in collection of MSW or in areas where recyclables are being dumped in landfills in absence of an existing resource recovery mechanism. We have identified following cities 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Pondicherry Gangtok Panjim Pune Port Blair Chennai Kolkata Coimbatore Kochi

10. Chandigarh.

Conclusion
Integrated solid waste management (iSWM) program for the cities found most ideal for implementing it, can not only divert majority of its waste from entering landfill but also recover resources, generate employment and revenue source for masses and has a potential to sustain on its own for years to come without any financial assistance from the government in future.