Clean Pune

Pune, the second-largest city in Maharashtra after Mumbai, offers a shining

example of what a city can do to manage the growing menace of garbage as
it urbanises at a rapid pace. Widely known as the cultural capital of
Maharashtra, Pune is also called Oxford of the East because of its many fine
educational institutions, attracting migrants and students from all over India
and abroad. The city has always been an important commercial centre of
Maharashtra, but the rapid growth of industry in the Pune district,
particularly the concentration of IT companies and of automotives and autocomponents, has added a modern flavour to its development.
Growing numbers and rising prosperity has meant that not only is the
quantity of solid waste growing Pune generates 1,400 metric tonnes of
solid waste per day but its composition is also changing, with more
plastics and non-biodegradable elements to reflect the changing patterns of
consumption of the growing middle classes.
The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has been trying a range of solutions,
from the most traditional and informal to the most modern and scientific,
converting waste to energy with state-of-the-art environment-friendly
technology and developing scientific landfills for depositing the much
reduced garbage that cannot be reused. Rag-pickers' cooperatives are
participating in the clean-up as much as the corporate sector with the latest
technology.
Pune was no different from other Indian cities in having piles of waste on
street corners and overflowing community bins which were rummaged by
rag-pickers to seek out a living from selling the recyclable bits. Garbage used
to slowly find its way from the bins to transfer stations and was finally
transported to the dumpsite 22 km away at Urali to rot.
Things began to change in the 1990s, much before the government of India
notified the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules in 2000
for all Indian cities. The inspiration for change came from Poornima
Chikarmane and Laxmi Narayan, two lecturers at the SNDT University in
Pune who urged city residents to segregate wet and dry waste so that the
scavengers did not have to sift through the garbage looking for what they
could sell. Their efforts led to the setting up of the Kagad Kach Patra
Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP) in 1993, a trade union of waste-pickers. The
municipal corporations of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad started issuing photo
ID cards to rag-pickers, which allowed them to scavenge, reducing the scope
for police brutality.

When the PMC set out to develop an integrated strategy to comply with the
SWM Rules of 2000, they found the arrangement with the rag-pickers as well
as the habit of segregating dry waste from wet waste on the part of
households very handy. In 2007, the PMC and the KKPKP jointly promoted the
creation of SWaCH, a cooperative of waste pickers and other urban poor,
using their members to provide door-to-door collection services for
households, shops, offices, etc. Those not covered by door-to-door collection,
were required to use containers and compactor buckets as prescribed by the
PMC.
SWaCH members are authorised to collect service-based user fee. They work
in pairs covering 250-300 households for segregated waste collection, further
segregating the recyclables and dropping the non-recyclable waste at feeder
points. From there, the waste is collected by Ghanta trucks. Altogether, they
collect more than 600 tonnes of solid waste per day; in addition, about 10
tonnes is composted and 150 tonnes is recycled by them in spaces provided
by the housing societies themselves.
The PMC has agreed to pay Rs 8.6 crore for the administrative and
management cost of operations if the collection coverage is 100 per cent,
under a five-year MoU. So far, 35 per cent of the households have door-todoor coverage, and the PMC has paid Rs 3 crore towards administration costs
and Rs 70 lakh for uniforms, gloves, badges, wheelbarrows, buckets and
sorting sheds, to improve the working conditions of the rag-pickers. On the
other hand, the PMC saves on handling cost (estimated at Rs 12 crore per
annum) and the cost of transportation of the waste to the landfill.
Another very important initiative of the PMC is the Zero Garbage project in
Katraj, the largest ward in Pune. Launched in February 2011, this was a
collective effort of Janwani, an NGO, Cummins India, and SWaCH, who came
together to provide the model, the financing and manpower. The result is
that only two tonnes of waste is sent per day to the landfill site, compared
with 10 tonnes per day earlier. The PMC is determined to scale up this
initiative.
A pioneering initiative of the PMC has been to set up 14 biomethanationcum-power generation (BCPG) plants, mostly of 5 tpd capacity. The
technologies were selected on the basis of competitive bidding and O&M
contracts for five years were granted to the different parties which brought in
the technology. Transporting wet waste to them is the responsibility of the
PMC. These plants treat organic waste in a decentralised and environmentfriendly manner. Given the collection efficiency of 80-90 per cent, of which
45 per cent is segregated waste, the PMC has allotted separate vehicles for
the collection of wet waste, which comes to about 300-350 tonnes per day.
For each BCPG plant, the PMC provides 600 sq metres of land, 5,000 litres of

water and electricity connection at site (both water and electricity free of
cost).
The waste is treated in two-stage biomethanation process by using closed
vessels where, in the absence of oxygen, micro-organisms break down the
organic matter into a stable residue, and generate a methane- rich biogas in
the process. This gas can then be used as a source of renewable energy to
produce electricity (net surplus after own requirement) of 400 KWh per day,
which is being used for street lights in the surrounding area. The solid
residue is used as manure, and the aqueous liquor is a nutrient-rich fertiliser
which can be used to recycle nutrients back to agricultural land.
As Mahesh Pathak, municipal commissioner of Pune put it, "Besides the
income of Rs 1 crore resulting from savings in electricity and from the sale of
manure from the 11 plants, the saving on the cost of transportation and
dumping is Rs 80 lakh. The environmental saving because of the reduced
transportation of the waste, is an added bonus."
From June 1, 2010, the PMC has stopped open dumping, and the total waste
generated is processed scientifically. Hanjer Biotech is operating a processing
plant of 1,000 tpd of mixed waste producing RDF, manure and fuel at the old
dumping site at Urali and Fursungi. The company has constructed a scientific
landfill to dispose the inert waste (about 20 per cent).
At the high end of the technology spectrum is the "non-incineration based
thermal waste to energy" plant set up in a PPP model in the Ramtekdi
Industrial Area. The investment of Rs 140 crore was made by the private
company, Rochem Separation Systems India Pvt Ltd, based on the patented
Concord Blue gasification technology on the 2.5 acre land provided by the
PMC on a lease-rental basis. This state-of-the-art technology, for which the
patent is held by Prayas Goel, Managing Director of Concord Blue, processes
unsegregated waste to produce energy, fulfilling the requirements of the EPA
and European standards with regard to emissions.
The syngas (synthesised gas) is produced from unsegregated waste, which is
a combination of biodegradable and non-biodegradable components by a
thermal process of heating in complete absence of oxygen followed by
reformation of the produced gas, which leads to a clean hydrogen rich gas
that can be utilised for power generation (currently operational in the said
facility). Unlike biogas which is produced from a biological activity of bacteria
breaking down only the biodegradable component of the waste, syngas is
produced from a thermal process and hence is a solution for the complete
spectrum of solid waste sans inerts. Also, syngas is rich in hydrogen, making
it one of the cleanest fuels, unlike biogas which constitutes about 50 per cent
methane.

With the increment in the quantum of plastics in our lifestyle, we need an

environmentally friendly solution for its disposal. Owing to its nonbiodegradable nature, plastics cannot be landfilled. Incinerating plastics
without expensive control equipment gives rise to dioxins and furans from
the PVC component of plastics which are carcinogenic in nature and hence
extremely harmful to all living beings. The Concord Blue technology, owing to
its non-incineration platform, converts solid waste into gas without
production of dioxin and furans over the permissible limit.
The PMC is committed to transporting 700 tonnes of unsegregated waste for
30 years, and the company has to process the waste on the same day. The
PMC has to pay a processing fee of Rs 300 per tonne of waste, and the
company is free to sell the power to appropriate third-party buyers. The
carbon credits when realised will be shared equally by the two.
With 28 surrounding villages added to its jurisdiction only last week, Pune's
population has increased from 39 lakh to 50 lakh and the area under the
jurisdiction of the PMC has expanded from 244 sq km to 430 sq km. The
challenge of solid waste management and disposal is that much greater. The
vision shown by the PMC in garnering the support of important stakeholders
from among city residents is the key to preparing for the future.