“Swachh Bharat”

Background
The Swachh Bharat online community was recently established to enable citizens to come together at a national level and local level for the cause of Swachh Bharat. The community now has over 190,000 citizens and are giving inputs on various aspects of Cleanliness.
Inputs were recently sought on the subject of Garbage Management in India in a structured way with the identification of Issue, Root Causes and Solutions. This whitepaper represents the collective views of the citizens on the subject. The community expects that it will be reviewed by all national and local Government agencies and the proposed solutions will be implemented.

Issues Identified:
1. Not enough dustbins in public areas
2. Garbage is burnt on roads which leads to health hazards
3. Garbage dumps are open creating a foul smell in nearby areas
4. Garbage overflows the collection bins
5. No segregation of wet and dry garbage
6. Increasing electronic waste
7. Indiscriminate use of plastic bags
8. Every building does not have a garbage disposal system of its own
9. Citizens' mentality of littering public places is a major issue
10. Government has no proper arrangement to sort out plastic and non-plastic garbage
11. People utilize the vacant places available near buildings or vacant plots to throw garbage
12. Municipal workers lack proper equipment to collect garbage, especially in semi urban and rural areas
13. Poor and illiterate people either have no means to dispose garbage or do not know why they should not throw garbage around the places where they live
14. Rag pickers also spread the garbage on the Roads
15. Hawkers leave the area unclean
16. Clogging of drainage system due to solid waste

Root Causes Identified:
1. Dustbins are stolen from public places
2. No fines imposed by the Government
3. Rag pickers make a mess in the dumps and also burn stuff to get metal/copper etc.
4. The Municipal collection of garbage does not happen regularly on time and hence the overflow
5. Plastic bags are cheap and available very easily
6. With the advancement in technology and its cheap availability, the old electronic devices are thrown away
7. No law/mandate from the Government to maintain a waste disposal unit area/society wise
8. People have a mental block and they don’t want to change
9. The ‘chalta hai’ attitude of the people makes the condition worse
10. Municipal departments still have an old style of working and don’t want to invest in latest equipment
11. Zero awareness about this in rural India
12. Hawkers don’t clean the area where they stand thinking the municipal corporation will get it cleaned up in the morning
13. Local Corporators & MLAS do NOT take any active part to mobilise the local people's awareness
14. Municipal workers are lazy and don’t do their job well
15. People who carry the garbage have no patience to put it in the bins
16. No research and development on waste management
17. No education in schools/colleges about waste management
18. People avoiding close proximity to bins due to smell/ filthiness and tend to throw garbage into public bins from a distance
19. RWAs are not involved in planning garbage management of their areas with the municipality
20. Lack of enforcement and monitoring by the civic agencies.

Solutions Identified:
1. Garbage must be segregated at the source , i.e. domestic/commercial/Industrial level
2. Steep fine should be imposed on throwing garbage in undesignated areas
3. More dustbins should be installed in public areas
4. Plastic bags should be completely banned
5. Garbage should be picked up from the bins by the corporation at fixed time everyday
6. Separate bins should be installed for wet and dry waste
7. People should be educated on segregating wet and dry waste
8. Various campaigns should be organised in rural India to educate people on garbage management
9. Wet Garbage can either be used to make manure or compost gas or any other useful method to reuse it
10. RWAs should be actively involved in managing waste in the societies
11. It should be made mandatory for big societies to have garbage treatment plants
12. Public awareness campaigns about garbage management/ littering the streets should be done
13. People should be educated about the hazard of garbage and spread of diseases
14. Municipal worker in town as well as rural areas should be provided modern equipment to collect garbage
15. Large furnaces should be built to dispose the dry garbage
16. The truck which comes to collect garbage can be installed with a high temperature furnace itself
17. The municipal workers should be made answerable
18. Job of garbage collection should be outsourced and the private contractor should charge a nominal fee to the residents
19. Households should be educated on how to make manure with the kitchen waste
20. Biometric attendance system should be installed in Municipal offices so that all the employees show up for work
21. Hawkers should be fined for littering
22. Government should develop better R&D centres for garbage management
23. Waste management should be taught in middle school
24. Stop illegal import of garbage (medical waste, hazardous chemicals, used end of life electronic equipment etc.)
25. All garbage vehicles (Trucks, Tempo, Lorries) should be properly closed while running with Garbage on Roads
26. Cleaning services should be outsourced to private agencies rather than government officials. There should be heavy fine in case of failure in their job and suspension from any further contracts

Garbage Management in India – A few citizen posts:
1. Municipalities show in books that are spending lakhs / crores of rupees for spreading bleaching powder near dumping yards. But they do not use bleaching powder, but only lime powder. Crores of rupees is swindled by the corrupt officials / staff – B. S. Murthy

2. All stake holders like RWA/ Political Parties/ Corporates/ Business Houses/ Educational Institutions/ Local councils need to be educated on cleanliness and to adopt the same in their daily lives. We find during elections all stick posters or put up flags though this has reduced which later are turned into filth. Bills are stuck on road signs by businesses/ traders to advertise which should be penalised by the RWA / Local Council. Local Councillor should be held responsible for slackness in cleanliness as he takes a salary for the work he is expected to do in which cleanliness is a basic work. Corporates should be held responsible for disposal of electronic waste generated by their employees. Strict implementation of policies should be ENFORCED – Dinesh Agarwal

3. In this time it's important to stop illegal import of garbage (medical waste, hazardous chemicals, used end of life electronic equipment, etc.) Which is a real threat for our environment and growing generation – Pushkkaran

4. There should be cleaning twice a day where dustbin and waste bin is kept. There should be an electronic attendance when person cleans. The safety of attendance device will be of municipal corporation or the person who cleans – Sushil Kumar 5. Cleaning services should be outsourced to private agencies rather than government officials. There should be heavy fine in case of failure in their job and suspension from any further contracts – Sushil Kumar

6. Corporation workers collect and many times burn. A lot of teaching is required with explanation as what to do and what not to do and why? Just saying so does not get the message home. Same way children can be taught the garbage handling and once convinced, they carry the message to families and so on – N Sethi

7. Fixing of the responsibilities/accountability on the officers for the relevant area. Each officer should be responsible and answerable to the area given to him/her. Regular reporting system from the agencies responsible for the garbage management including individual reports from the concerned officers/employees to be made mandatory – Girish Varma

8. The main problem with the municipality is lack of revenue, even if they know they cannot invest in new technology/ manpower to improve garbage handling, unless separate funds availability is ensured with accountability things won't change. Its easy to blame them but u must appreciate the amount of garbage they turn over every day – Vinit Mishra

9. 1 stop solution: Ecopot garbage garden in all homes- no more garbage collection, no blame games. Government can educate, demo public on eliminating organic wastes in home level. Non organic wastes-glass, paper can be collected once a moth. If you can grow veggies from wastes, why throw it to streets? Incinerators, landfills need garbage collection- not needed. This can be zero cost to Government. Why government does not encourage Indian techs is sad. GOI must use green not CO2 producing techs. All home owners will use Ecopots like compulsory rain water harvesting. GOI needs new thoughts. Increase vegetables @homes, help mothers, no complaints of high veg prices. Will GOI green wastes? – Vijayan Thiru

10. We have to have simple clear-cut instructions which MUST BE FOLLOWED in dealing with waste by ALL. No exclusions. Any default must be corrected by peer pressure by citizens, municipal workers, office staff, and people on street and public places, officials meeting in the conference rooms or anybody anywhere. Policy is simple. Most developed countries have succeeded by making it simple to implement by facilitating waste collection, removal, compression, destruction as well laid out policy and procedure. As a society, we ALL as social entity are material processing machine acquiring, using, consuming and throwing out material; we must be organized to deliver cleaner processed waste. In addition we have to have procedure for pollution generated waste like dust, deposits on open objects, drainage deposits , rainwater and leaves of trees and animal dumping are also to be treated by us humans. So we MUST have procedure, documented, taught, reminded by announcements for those who cannot read and shown in prominent places as rule – Ashok Saraf

11. It is very important to inculcate the culture of waste management among the public. Our media should provide enough space for waste management in their daily program. A number of co-operative societies are to be formed under the local authorities to promote garbage and waste management. Recycling plants to be introduced in rural and urban areas to covert waste into useful energy – Abdulla Manjeri