Mahadeep Singh Jamwal
The waste is the pronunciation for all such material termed to be of no common use, accumulated by cleaning process of surrounding area, house hold, commercial institutions, industries, and what not, whereas waste management is an activity and action required to manage waste, from its inception to its final disposal. It includes collection, transportation, treatment and disposal. If we track down the history on the subject, we will come across that at the early stage of life, amount of waste generated by humans, was insignificant due to low population density. The common waste produced during pre-modern times was released back into the ground locally. Some civilisations were more concerned in their waste output and there were fixed monthly rituals, in which the people of the village would gather together and burn their rubbish in large dumps. With advancement of life style and modernisation, there was urban growth of large population, which contributed in buildup of large quantity of waste of divergent nature, and these all collectively caused a rapid deterioration of sanitation, health problems, water bodies and environment. The great player in the field emerged is the industrialisation. The governments failed to cope up with the required waste management programs and the contributors of waste failed to address the issue in right perspective. Some of the types of waste mainly are Industrial Waste, Bio-Medical Waste, E-Waste, Clinical waste, Constructional and Demolition Wastes, Domestic Waste etc. The main waste concerning the residential societies can be termed as ‘Municipal Waste’ the residential, institutional, commercial waste can be clubbed under this category of ‘Municipal Waste’ and Plastic Waste.
The Municipal Waste management is intended to reduce effects of waste on health, environment or aesthetics and mostly effected is the urbanised area which involves residential waste, which further can be classified as household waste and kitchen waste, and waste of surrounding area and waste from drudgery of lanes and drains. The household waste from toiletry problem cannot be solved only with technical end-of-pipe solutions and kitchen waste management cannot be solved by dumping it in dust-bins. The surrounding clean waste cannot be managed by dumping it, in many dumping sites in the societal locations which are major health hazards and always targeted by the people.
There are many laws and rules framed on the subject such as;
* Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling), Rules 1998.
* The Batteries (Management and Handling), Rules 2001. Replaced by E-Waste (Management and Handling), Rules), 2011.
* The Plastic Waste (Management and Handling), Rules 2011.
* The Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Trans-Boundary Movement), Rules 2008.
The methods involved in waste management can generally be categorised as;
* Source reduction and reuse. It is a matter of thought about requirement of the daily use items, which contribute large in production of our domestic waste by sticking to the minimum requirement.
* Animal feeding. By adhering to the principle of animal services, we can contribute in feeding to the animals by sending our food waste to cattle ponds and dairy farms.
* Recovery process. Is a method where useful discarded items can be utilized for a specific next use, such as to process them for converting to energy, useable heat, electricity and fuel? Such waste can be sold to such unit holders and it becomes profitable in this way.
* Composting is a natural bio-degradation process that takes organic wastes i.e. remains of plants, garden, and kitchen waste and to turn into rich food for plants and it also reduces creation of waste material.
* Land filling is an old tradition of dumping waste in the open spaces and barren lands? This is now becoming obsolete owing to the reason of non availability of such lands. Additionally many types of garbage may be damaging to the soil, ground water and surrounding habitat.
* Combustion involves burning of waste at high temperature to convert it into residue which is advantageous as the waste is reduced in volume of solid waste.
* Recycling is a process of plastic and other metallic waste, converting into fresh raw material for reproduction of items.
In this way the waste management is also beneficial to the individual, society and nation as a whole, as it is economically beneficial because of the reasons of less use of fresh material, social impact is that it has adverse effect on health by proper waste management method and environmental benefit is that it improves quality of air and water and this waste management has provided a source of livelihood to a number of persons also.
Waste management is important because improperly stored refuse can cause health, safety and economic problems. All living organisms create waste, but humans create for more waste than other species. To prevent damaging the earth’s ecosystems and maintain a high quality of life for the planets inhabitants, human must manage and store their waste efficiently and safely. The introduction of Domestic Waste Collection has become order of the day, and some sort of ‘service fee’ is not going as a burden on even family of a meager source, because the health benefits which we will accrue from it, will be hundred times more. Awareness is required to keep three types of dust bins in every household for disposal of three type of waste i.e. Waste for Recycle, General Waste and Food Waste. Due to lack of proper waste management and management of debris, the Total Sanitation Programmers rebranded as ‘Swatch Bharat Abhiyan’ have failed on ground as the waste so collected instead of disposing in real perspective is dumped on other sites away from the sight of the public.
