Waste management: solid waste, plastic and e-waste

Waste management is the unglamorous core of urban environmental policy. A city that cannot collect, segregate, treat and dispose of its waste will pollute its land, water and air whatever its climate pledges say. India's waste rules separate the streams: solid waste, plastic waste, electronic waste, biomedical waste, hazardous waste and construction waste each have their own rules, because each needs different handling.

The Solid Waste Management Rules of 2016 require segregation at source into wet, dry and hazardous fractions, door-to-door collection, and processing through composting, biomethanation or recycling, with only non-recyclable residue going to landfill. In practice, segregation remains patchy, processing plants run below capacity, and many cities still depend on dumpsites that catch fire and leach into groundwater. The Swachh Bharat Mission, launched in 2014, improved toilet access and street cleaning visibility, but waste processing capacity has lagged behind collection.

Plastic waste is governed by the Plastic Waste Management Rules of 2016, as amended, which introduced extended producer responsibility: producers, importers and brand owners must take responsibility for collecting and processing an amount of plastic linked to what they place on the market. A ban on selected single-use plastic items came into effect on 1 July 2022. The difficulty is enforcement across millions of small producers and informal recyclers, and the fact that the cheapest plastics are also the hardest to recycle.

Electronic waste is the fastest-growing stream, driven by short product lives for phones, computers and appliances. The E-Waste (Management) Rules of 2022, effective from 1 April 2023, also use extended producer responsibility, with targets for collection and recycling. Much e-waste still flows to informal recyclers, who recover valuable metals with acid baths and open burning that harm their health and pollute soil and water. Formalising this sector, with safe methods and fair prices for collectors, is both an environmental and a livelihood issue.

The principle that runs through all three streams is that the polluter, or the producer, should pay for the end of a product's life, and that waste workers, who do most of the actual sorting and recycling, should be recognised and protected. A waste policy that ignores either principle will look good in rules and fail on the ground.