Clean India

Due to rapid urbanization and uncontrolled growth rate of population, solid waste management has become acute in India. The current practices of the uncontrolled dumping of waste on the outskirts of towns/cities have created a serious environmental and public health problem. Plastic waste which is biggest problem in waste management is recycled in India in an “unorganized” way. 60% of the plastic-waste collected and segregated gets recycled back into materials for further processing into consumer products, while the balance is left unutilized. The focus of the conference is to evaluate the present situation of Solid Waste Management and Plastic Management in India based an approach to design a sustainable system to meet the future challenge is presented. Some of the best practices like Amla Bharatam Campaign are also detailed. The efforts by a community-based organization to promote a sustainable integrated waste management in mega cities and lessons learnt from EXNORA’s Zero Waste Management Scheme in South Indian cities has also been outlined.

Introduction
Solid wastes are all the wastes arising from human and animal activities that are normally solid and are discarded as useless or unwanted. Generation of solid waste is not a new phenomenon. It is as old as the human civilization. In the early days, before the advent of the industrial revolution, the major constituents of wastes were domestic sewage and agricultural residues, which were biodegradable in nature. Since population was less and fallow land was in plenty, solid wastes could be conveniently disposed off in the countryside either on open ground or were placed in pits covered with layers of earth. Because of their biodegradable nature they used to get decomposed and assimilated in the soil. However, with unparallel industrialization and consequent organization...