CSE releases its rating of selected cities which manage and segregate their municipal waste most efficiently

Some of India’s smallest cities corner the top awards for municipal waste management 

• Vengurla, a tiny city in Maharashtra, gets the Five Leaves Award
• Rated cities are part of CSE’s Forum of Cities that Segregate. Rating done on the basis of their performance in 2017-18
• Awards given out at the Forum’s annual conclave in Delhi – CSE releases assessment report of performance of 20 cities
• Smaller cities (less than 0.1 million population) and mid-size cities (0.1-1 million) performbetter than million-plus cities
• Indore, Panchgani, Alappuzha, Thiruvananthapurametc ranked high.Delhi-NCR didnot perform well 

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New Delhi, June 7, 2018: “Keeping our cities clean by only collecting and disposing wastes is not sufficient. What is required is source-segregation, proper treatment, recycle and reuse of the waste. Zero landfill should be the goal of municipal waste management in India,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), while announcing the awards for most efficient management and segregation of waste by Indian cities which are members of the ‘Forum of Cities that Segregate’. 

CSE has been working with cities to promote and implement source-segregation and decentralized model of waste management. To advance this work and to create a movement in the country on source-segregation, CSE had launched the ‘Forum of Cities that Segregate’ on December12, 2017. The Forum now has 26 members, including cities like Indore, Thiruvananthapuram, Mysuru, Muzaffarpur and some municipal corporations of Delhi NCR (such as SDMC, EDMC and Gurugram). 

CSE released here today the 2017-18 assessment report of the performance of 20 of these 26 Forum cities. The cities were assessed based on their performance in 2017-18. The parameters included segregation at source, collection, transportation, waste processing, adoption of decentralised systems, the inclusion of informal sector and the enforcement of SWM bye-laws and Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016. Based on the findings of the assessment report, the best performers were selected and the Leaves Awards conferred on them. 

“Under this Forum, 26 cities from 14 states have come together to ensure that they adopt 100 per cent source segregation and become the pioneers of waste management in the country.Our objective through this assessment is to work with cities and help them perform better and continue to reinvent their waste management systems,” said Bhushan. 

The award winners and the findings of the assessment report
“It is clear in our assessment that smaller cities have been more successful in implementing source-segregation compared to bigger cities. They have alsobeen innovative in their approach and hence have performed well” said Swati Singh Sambyal, programme manager, waste management unit, CSE. 

• Vengurla, Maharashtra, received the highest Five Leaves Award. Panchagani, another city with less than 0.1 million residents, got the Four Leaves Award. So did two mid-level cities --Alappuzha and Thiruvananthapuram. In million plus cities, Indore and Mysuru got the Four Leaves. 

• The National Capital Region didnot perform well. The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) and the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC)received the Two Leaves Award;Gurugram got One Leaf only. 

• Most of the Forum cities have efficient collection and transportation systems to collect and transfer waste to the processing/landfill sites. 

• Four of the 20 Forum cities assessed have a segregation percentage higher than 90 per cent: Indore in Madhya Pradesh, Panchgani and Vengurla in Maharashtra and Alappuzha in Kerala. 

• Six Forum cities have wet waste processing greater than 90 per cent: Indore, Mysuru, Alappuzha, Panchgani, Balaghat and Vengurla. Four Forum cities have 90 per cent or higher dry waste processing: Panchgani, Vengurla, Indore and Alappuzha. 

• Thiruvananthapuram and Alappuzha have invested in creating decentralised systems for waste management. Some of the cities are also promoting decentralised processing at household level. 

• Some Forum cities have worked to ensure minimum disposal in landfills and maximum resource utilisation. Panchgani, Vengurla and Alappuzha have created systems to adopt a zero landfill model. Vengurla has no dump site or landfill. 

• A few of the Forum cities have enacted bye-laws as per the SWM Rules, 2016: they include Indore, SDMC, EDMC, Muzaffarpur, Vengurla and Bobbili. The enforcement of the bye-laws remains a challenge as does the enforcement of Plastic Waste Management Rules (PWM), 2016. 

• Indore has set up an efficient system for collection and processing of e-waste, construction and demolition (C&D) waste and bio-medical waste. 

Recently, the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs had released its SwachhSurvekshan results 2018 for 52 cities.Commenting on it, Bhushan said: “A majority of the cities announced in Survekshan 2018 are ‘visibly’ clean,but many do not have an appropriate system for processing and disposal of waste. They continue to collectwaste and dumpit in under-functional processing sites, landfills or dumpsites.” 

He added: “Cities must shift their focus towards creating end-to-end systems to support segregation with effective processing and disposal mechanisms. Only then will such ranking systems work in changing the solid waste management scenario in the country.”

For more details and to access CSE’s resources on waste management, please contact ParulTewari of The CSE Media Resource Centre, parul@cseindia.org / 9891838367.