Solid Waste Management system has always been a serious concern for all urban local bodies. Being close to Delhi and as an important city of the State, Ghaziabad is in limelight for sanitation and other infrastructure facilities. People often tend to compare facilities of Ghaziabad city with the national capital, writes Divakar Mukherjee of Elets News Network (ENN).
With the ever increasing population and urbanisation, the waste management has emerged as a huge challenge in Ghaziabad. Not only the waste has increased in quantity, but the characteristics of waste have also changed tremendously over a period of time, with the introduction of so many new gadgets and equipment. Scientific disposal of solid waste through segregation, collection and treatment and disposal in an environmentally sound manner minimises the adverse impact on the environment.
In ‘Swachh Survekshan 2018’ (SS) Rankings, Ghaziabad fared greatly and secured a 36th position among 4,243 cities that were surveyed against 351st spot in SS Ranking in 2017. The reason behind this good performance was solid waste management in the city largely. From zero door-to-door garbage collection in 2016 to covering 82 wards out of 100 wards in 2017, we have covered a huge area. For this purpose, 150 Tata Ace vehicles were procured by the Nagar Nigam. Also public participation played a key role in creating awareness and making development process participatory through encouragement and by sharing knowledge, skills and techniques with the people.
Ghaziabad Corporation aims to complete the full chain of solid waste disposal that requires scientific collection, segregation and scientific disposal on priority basis. With the waste-to-energy plant in place in coming months, the Corporation will be able to complete full chain of solid waste disposal that requires scientific collection, segregation and scientific disposal, as required under the Solid Waste Management and Handling Rules. Nagar Nigam roped in rag pickers and private garbage collectors in this scheme and they were provided training on waste segregation. They were tasked to go along with the vehicles for door-to- door garbage collection. At present, the city generates nearly 850 metric tonnes of daily solid waste of which goes to a temporary landfill site at Pratap Vihar.
Apart from the solid waste management schemes, the corporation has also undertaken various other tasks to ensure sanitation and cleanliness in the city, which includes mechanical sweeping, night-sweeping, waste to compost plants, pit composting and transformation of Garbage Vulnerable Points.
Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam has its own functional waste to compost plant with waste processing capacity of 300 Million Tonne (MT) per day. Also another waste to compost plant is adopted with neighbouring ULBs under cluster model for the waste processing 200 MT per day.
Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam has 1,200 plus parks out of which 749 have composting pits and out of 749 composting pits, 350 are functional composting pits. Citizen participation has played a key role in maintenance of some of these composting pits.
A Reverse Vending Machine has also been setup in the Nagar Nigam where people visiting the Nagar Nigam can throw their used plastic bottles. Those bottles are recycled. Nagar Nigam is aiming to recycle maximum waste that is generated inside the Nigam.
Nagar Nigam has planned several awareness campaigns to reduce the use of plastic — to make people aware of disposal of plastic bags, wrappers and cups. Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam is planning to install more vending machines to process plastic waste and help in segregating non-biodegradable waste from municipal solid waste. This, in turn, will reduce the load on landfill sites. 300 Garbage Vulnerable points have been transformed out of 351 points.