B-school's Green Tax, PPP ideas click with BMC for waste management

In order to bring about a sustainable integrated waste management system in place in Mumbai, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is planning to implement a proposal by a team from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), Mumbai.

The team has developed a pilot project for Mumbai, which has its own set of crisis in waste management. Some of them are dumping grounds, low serviced area of garbage collection, debris disposal, transportation of garbage, etc. Also, transportation cost and delay posed a challenge in the waste management. The team explored opportunities such as segregation of recyclable waste, the potential to generate 50 MW energy and carbon credits from waste, besides generating a good source of revenue from the recylcing of 2300 tonnes debris per day.

Considering the localised problems of waste management in Mumbai, the team suggested a Private Public Partnership (PPP) model, implementing Green Tax, incentives for source segregation of waste, to name a few, which will try to address the crisis in the best possible way. Also the technological advances will be used to capture the revenues from opportunities, apart from adopting the best international practices to meet the various challenges, the team suggests.

The financial constraints, institutional problems within the departments, fragile links with other concerned agencies, lack of suitable staff, and other allied problems prevent the urban local bodies from delivering and maintaining an efficient waste management system, according to the team. In this context, the team suggests involving private waste management companies to build infrastructure and mobilise sources of funding, government entities to implement large-scale initiatives, and NGOs for capacity building and behavioural change.

At its annual business convention, the team—Awadhesh Kumar, Hemant Patil, Shantanu Parihar, Ashish Pendam, Pranay Petkar, Vishal Raj— presented a strategic approach to sustainable management of solid wastes covering all sources and all aspects, covering generation, segregation, transfer, sorting, treatment, recovery and disposal in an integrated manner, with an emphasis on maximizing resource use efficiency.

The proposed model will work on the principle of waste hierarchy, which means prioritising the activities based on targeting waste reduction at source, technological interventions and efforts towards institutional and regulatory reforms.

According to the team, "One of the panelists of the convention, Seema Redkar, officer on special duty ( Advanced Locality Management Program) of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai is planning to implement the paper presented by the students of JBIMS, following which the BMC, in collaboration with JBIMS students will be undertaking a wardwise implementation, consisting of a population of 7-8 lakh people, after discussions with the Commissioner-In Charge." The team is also in the initial phase of discussions with some private players in Nagpur for the feasibility of adopting the afore mentioned ideas.

"Mumbai is an island city with the population of 13 million that is increasing on daily basis. Such a huge habitat obviously generates a huge amount of waste of many kinds and the management of which is a massive task for the local administration. It is recommended to bring in Green tax on all non-biodegradable products to motivate people to consume less and hence generate less waste. Other policy measures include excessive packaging tax, incentives for source segregation of waste, etc. Currently, the processing of waste is completely neglected and various processing methods such as composting, bio-methanation, C&D recycling, etc are proposed to generate revenues from the waste," the team says.