Public Participation is the Key Element in Municipal Solid Waste Management

Authors

  • Lalit Das , Adyasha Das , Sitikantha Mishra

Abstract

— Effective waste management system is the key to smartcity functioning. Sustainable Solid Waste
Management needs sufficient funding. Citizens should be ready to participate financially as well as socially
to make it effective. This paper has tried to find out the correlation between the ‘enforcement capability of
the Urban Local Bodies(ULB) to collect and recover the cost of various Public Services from the residents’
and the ‘final performance of the ULBs’. It is noticed that Urban Local Bodies having more willing citizens
to pay for the waste management and those who are able to collect maximum tax from the citizens for SWM
have better performance on the final count. Therefore, it clearly shows that smart ULBs with better reforms,
enforcement and proper tax collection can keep their city clean.
A citizen Survey was carried out to find out the waste sensitivity of the city inhabitants. Waste sensitivity is
determined with factors like littering habit, readiness to pay user charges, handing over the trash to waste
collectors or kabadiwalas, opting for recycling, using community bins etc. It helps assessing the most
appropriate waste collection method to be adopted in a city. This shows a low degree of waste sensitivity
among residents needs more elaborate collection methods. The research points out, the rise in income level
directly affects the mindset of the waste disposer thereby changing the habits with waste disposal. Unless
public participate in all the aspects of waste management starting from source storage, source segregation
along with paying the requisite taxes for waste collection, transportation and final disposal of waste, the
concept of clean city is quite unattainable.

Published

2020-01-31

Issue

Section

Articles