A Technical Report on Solid Waste Management of Mumbai

In the present scenario where the amount of wastes are increasing day by day, the use of proper solid waste management system turns out to play a vital role. Solid waste management plays an important role in the overall functioning of the society or as a whole the environment. If solid waste management is not carried out systematically, the effects will be adverse for the people as well as for the environment. In large cities like Mumbai, the management of wastes alone by the municipal corporations cannot meet the need of the proper solid waste management system. Hence, the municipality has turned out to work on a decentralized manner with the help of NGOs and various organisations. Though decentralized system run on smaller scales, but with the effective participation of people as stakeholders gave rise to the waste traders or ?raddiwallahs? who are seen at various spots of the cities, who sell the recyclable wastes to make their fruitful use. Due to all these approaches, decentralized system is leading to a greater success in recent times. Advanced locality model is a type of optimisation model for SWM system. As per the model, three plants were installed, of which, 1st plant is community compost plant, 2nd is mechanical 5aerobic compost plant, 3rd plant follows sanitary landfilling techniques. These plants ultimately turn wastes into useful products like manure, converting landfill gas into CNG etc. The amount of waste generation cannot be reduced but with proper recovery of the wastes, the problem of solid waste management can be resolved. The principle of 4R: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover should be adopted. Various methods like biomethanation, gasification, incineration, vermicomposting, aerobic composting etc. should be introduced for the proper maintenance of SWM.