Waste segregation in Delhi: Lack of awareness, no support from garbage collectors main hurdles

In a big push to the Centre’s Solid Waste Management Rules 2016, the North and East Delhi implemented garbage ‘segregation at source’ in 10 neighbourhoods on Monday.

This was followed by awareness drives and distribution of green and blue bins for keeping biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste on Tuesday.

But the success of the concept remains a challenge for the civic agencies as a majority of people either don’t know about segregation or were reluctant to try it.

On Tuesday, HT visited some neighbourhoods in north and east Delhi for a reality check and figured out the hurdles.

Vivekanandpuri, a gated colony located near Sarai Rohilla, houses 800 families and is among the 10 localities selected under the pilot project. After the announcement, the civic agency has increased the auto-tipper trips for collecting waste and also redesigned the tippers with provision for separate compartments for dry and wet waste.

“Apart from that we arranged for camps to educate people in association with RWAs and distributed bins. But only 11 people turned up at the event. Going by this, it is difficult to comment about how long we will take to achieve 100% success,” said a sanitation officer, North MCD.

Adding to the problem is the lack of support from garbage collectors. “There are 40-50 private collectors engaged by the residents in Vivekanandpuri and unless they will start collecting dry and wet waste separately, the situation is not going to change,” said an official from department of environment management services.

However, the NGO and experts working in the field have different point of view. “The people are not reluctant, they either forget to segregate or their priorities are different. It is important the agency organises more camps and mobilises people. Also, they should not accept the non-segregated garbage,” said Bharti Chaturvedi, founder of Chintan, an NGO.

According to her, it is understood that the tippers can’t enter each and every lane. “So it is important that the civic agency should engage and educate the rag-pickers as well,” she said.

On the other hand, the officials believe unless the civic agencies are allowed to impose penalty on those not segregating the waste, no one is going to take the concept seriously.

In comparison to Vivekanandpuri, things looked encouraging at the MCD residential quarters at Minto Road. A majority of residents were keen to adopt the concept. “I am going to tell my maid also to separate the garbage,” said Sunita Saini, a resident .

In east Delhi, dustbins were distributed while the waste segregation process is expected to start from Wednesday, said an official. But the residents of Jhimil said that they have not seen anyone distributing the garbage bins in the area.