Ahmedabad: Garbage woes refuse to go away

Garbage is the most discussed topic in Ahmedabad right now. The Ahmedabad Municipality Corporation has put into practice a rule (Public Health Bye-Laws – 2015) wherein garbage needs to be disposed of the night before, failing which, a penalty of Rs 500 is levied. But yet, heaps of garbage can be found lying around every morning.

October saw the worst of it all with 1,064 community bins removed from the streets. "After the civic body lifted the community bins, there was no way to dispose of the waste, throwing on the road was the only option," said Komal Ramrakhiyani, a resident of Naroda.

The civic body took the bins as per guidelines under Swachh Bharat Mission's Swachh Survekshan 2019. But, that has created a bigger problem. "We have received several complaints regarding piles of garbage where dustbins were earlier placed. We are in the process of chipping in with a few more garbage collection vehicles," said Amul Bhatt, standing committee chairman, AMC.

But extra vehicles or not, the garbage issue does not seem to going away anytime soon. Currently, around 1,600 tonnes of segregated waste is collected every day from commercial and residential units. This waste is, however, dumped, and not recycled.

The city collects another 1,500 to 1,800 metric tonnes of construction and debris waste, which is recycled into paver blocks. While the city produces around 4,000 metric tonne of solid waste daily on an average, the AMC can recycle only 23%.

Three companies have been roped in to recycle waste. Excel Industries takes 300 tonnes of mixed solid waste and converts it into fertilizer. Bharuch Enviro Infrastructure takes 250 metric tonnes of mixed solid waste to turn it into fertilizer and refuse-derived fuel (RDF). Creative EcoRecycle Port also converts mixed solid waste into fertilizer and RFD.

According to one of the officials of Bharuch Enviro, it is difficult to make fertilizer from waste. "We have to segregate it first which consumes a lot of time and after that, we have to keep the waste for 15 to 20 days in the open before starting the process. If we get segregated waste, we can easily recycle them," the official said.

The story of short-lived plastic ban

After the World Environment Day earlier this year, the AMC ran a campaign titled ‘Beat the Plastic’ and banned plastic items such as plastic bags, water pouches and cups for a month. During the drive, more than 7 tonnes of such items were confiscated and fines worth Rs 85 lakh was collected.

This helped reduce plastic waste in the city, so much so that during the Rathyatra festival in July only 500 kg of plastic was found strewn on the roads, compared to 12 tonnes earlier. Four months down, Ahmedabad is back to its old ways and polythene bags are again easily available and commonly found in the garbage.

How to solve a problem like Pirana?

Four decades ago, the mountain range that flanked eastern Ahmedabad was an ideal location to dump waste. 

The city has expanded since then, and the landfill now stands in the centre. The Pirana dumpsite emits smoke every day which is a cause for concern for the residents and AMC.

Since 1980, the local authority has been dumping around 4,000 metric tonnes of solid waste at the site every day. While the civic authority aims to turn Ahmedabad into a zero-waste city by 2031, Pirana stands in the way.

There has been a series of plans to deal with the problem but not many of them materialised. In 2015-16, D Thara, who was the municipal commissioner at the time, even asked for the closure of the site. But that did not go through. There were also plans to generate energy from waste.