32% of Delhi’s daily waste at mercy of elements: ASCI
The audit conducted flagged the shortcomings in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s primary process of door-to-door collection of waste
An audit of Delhi’s garbage management, and the implementation of the Capital’s municipal solid waste (MSW) management rules, revealed that nearly 32% of the waste that the city generates is leaking into the environment and needs immediate attention.
The audit conducted by the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad, also flagged the shortcomings in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s primary process of door-to-door collection of waste.
Delhi produces an estimated 11,000 tonne of waste per day. In April 2023, the Solid Waste Management Committee headed by the lieutenant governor had directed MCD to carry out a third-party audit of Delhi’s solid waste management, collection, transportation, recycling, processing and disposal system.
Subsequently, a team from ASCI studied Delhi’s waste collection between September and December. Municipal commissioner Gyanesh Bharti, while presenting MCD’s annual budget proposals for 2024-25 on December 9, shared that ASCI will assess the Capital’s garbage management, and identify the areas of improvement.
The audit report found that 32% of the waste generated daily “is leaking into environment and needs immediate attention”. The report revealed that around 7% of this garbage (770 tonne per day) is not collected and leaks from the primary collection at source, around 20% of the daily generation of waste is dumped on to oversaturated dump sites, and 5% is left after wet waste processing.
HT has seen a copy of the report.
The audit noted that at the primary, door-to-door collection level, only 43% of garbage ends up at dhalaos and dustbins. “It was observed that door-to-door collection is significantly lacking within the city and is predominantly managed by informal waste pickers... The primary collection is done mainly using auto tippers,” the report said.
The report said that the primary waste collection varies from 17% (Rohini zone) to 78% (Najafgarh zone), with an average of about 48% for the entire MCD area, and recommended that the civic body implement a pilot system with the help of NGOs in 12 wards (one in each zone) and scale it up in phases while learning from models in Indore, Hyderabad and Ambikapur.
“There is a crucial need for a comprehensive analysis and categorisation of the city’s waste to establish a reliable baseline for planning and obtaining waste quantity and characterisation,” the report added.
The audit also made a set of 11 recommendations, including short-term measures such as introducing a robust door-to-door waste collection system, establishing a comprehensive monitoring system, a command-and-control centre, strengthening the bulk waste management system, and changes in street sweeping management.
The audit said that in long term, the corporation will have to upgrade its secondary collection and transportation system, and improve planning at the ward- and zonal-level.
An MCD spokesperson said: “The report is under study and is not finalised yet as MCD has reservations to many of its findings. Having said this, it is also stated that MCD is committed to find efficacious and sustainable solutions to any weak link in its solid waste management.”
Environmentalist Bharti Chaturvedi, founder of Chintan Environmental and Action Group, said, “MCD needs to incentivise the informal sector by providing them space for recycling and bringing them into the system by generating their ID cards.”
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