Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is one of the chief conservational issues in India currently. This owes to indecorous controlling of MSW, leading to depletion of inhabitants. According to several studies, more than 90% of the solid waste is disposed into open dumping areas and landfills across the city, leading to health and the environment problems. It is not only India, which is facing challenges with solid waste management. Last week, a report found that nearly 2.5 billion disposable cups were used in the UK yearly. In Europe, spending on garbage bags totaled $12 billion in 2016, according to a study by Future Market Insights.
Today, more than half of the world’s populace is urban, therefore, managing MSW in urban areas is a colossal task. In 2009-2010, a report by World Bank estimated that 1.3 billion tons of the solid waste was produced yearly.
Municipal Solid Waste and the Deathtraps!
MSW contains commercial and domestic wastes formed in municipal or warned regions (both in solid or semi-solid form), including bio-medical wastes. Wastewater drains is often clogged by uncollected waste and unselective dumping, thereby, contaminating the ground water. Moreover, choked pipes drive urban flooding and inaction of water, providing a hospitable environment for the dissemination of water-borne diseases.
In the past few years, several private sector enterprises have faced a business prospect in the numerous challenges related to Solid waste management (SWM). Several of these enterprises have amalgamated with waste-pickers or rag-pickers. Waste-pickers questionably have the lowest remunerations in the SWM value chain, while also facing exposure to supposedly hazardous waste.
Few of the enterprises leading to the change are:
- Protoprint, Pune
Established in 2013 by Siddhant Pai, Protoprint is an enterprise based in Pune which allies with waste pickers to transform plastic waste into filaments for 3D printing. Though 3D printing is still at the promising phase in the nation, this initiative is likely to influence the current waste management scenario.
- GPS Renewables, Bangalore
Founded in 2011, GPS Renewables is a Bangalore based enterprise that sets up dense waste-to-energy plants, eventually, converting bio-degradable kitchen waste into biogas that is usable for cooking.
GPS Renewables aims to build the innovative technology products and services to hold waste in the unpolluted likely way, providing first-rate fiscal revenues to its consumers.
- Karma Recycling, New Delhi
Founded in 2013, Karma Recycling purchases old electronic devices from individuals and renovates or recycles them. The solid waste produced in urban areas is varying with changing time and technology. As plastic and paper waste continues to rise, people are now dumping a number of laptops and mobile phones.
