Chandigarh roads choked with dry leaves as waste management falters

With the onset of spring and a surge in leaf shedding across the city, Chandigarh’s Municipal Corporation (MC) is once again grappling with the challenge of managing its leaf waste. The lack of adequate scientific processing facilities has led to heaps of dry leaves accumulating along roadsides, turning civic neglect into a growing eyesore and potential fire hazard.

At present, the city’s infrastructure for handling such seasonal waste remains woefully inadequate. The MC operates composting pits at 104 sites inside parks, with a total capacity of just 32 tonnes per day (TPD). These pits are used to process a mix of dry leaves and horticulture waste into compost. However, given the large volume of leaves being shed every season, the composting capacity has been overwhelmed, leaving tonnes of leaf litter uncollected across city streets.

In previous years, the MC resorted to dumping dry leaves in low-lying areas such as Sector 47 and Dadumajra for natural decomposition. However, this practice triggered strong opposition from local residents due to the associated stench, mosquito breeding, and fire incidents. Following multiple complaints, MC officials had assured that open dumping would be discontinued—yet the lack of a sustainable alternative has brought the problem full circle.

Not just composting pits, MC has the limited capacity in horticulture waste processing plant too, located in the Industrial Area, Phase 2. Processing around 12 TPD of pruned horticulture waste daily (which includes pruned branches and stems), the plant is running at full capacity, but is still far from meeting the city’s overall waste disposal needs.

“In a bid to address the shortfall of processing dry leaves, as well as remaining horticulture waste, the MC, in December, approved the construction of a second horticulture waste processing plant in Industrial Area, Phase 2. The upcoming facility, with a capacity of 60 TPD and an estimated cost of ₹4 crore, will use biofuel briquetting technology to convert horticulture waste into compact fuel bricks. The plant is yet to be set up and made operational, but we are already working to address the issue at the earliest”, said municipal commissioner Amit Kumar.

As per officials, the collected horticulture waste will be fed to the plant, segregated from impurities, if any, screened from dust, grind, dried and compacted to make bricks. The plant will also generate inert content (like soil, sand, grit), which will be transported to the designated aggregate processing plant.

“City residents continue to witness piles of leaves cluttering on sidewalks, parks, and road medians. Though MC claims of 100% processing of horticulture waste, the piles of leaves are the clear example of infrastructural gaps in Chandigarh’s waste management system”, said Harkanwar Kaur, a local resident.

Deputy mayor Taruna Mehta said, “We have already talked to medical officer of health (MOH) and had suggested them to increase the number of leaves collecting trolleys or rounds of trolleys for collection. We have also suggested them to procure special leaf collecting equipment from Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds since MC is facing acute financial crisis. These machines automatically crush the leaves in the collection equipment, making the processing easy. We will take up the matter in House meeting too.”