Studying the Municipal Solid Waste Management System in Meerut City, Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Solid waste is the unwanted and discarded solid materials generated from different places such as household, residential, industrial and commercial; activities in a given area. Meerut is the second largest city in the National Capital Region (NCR) after Delhi. Meerut Municipal Corporation (MMC) also known as Meerut Nagar Nigam (MNN) is sole agency for collection, transportation and disposal of solid waste management. The purpose of the paper is to analyse the status of municipal solid waste in Meerut city. Data was collected from different organisations and through primary survey. Out of total municipal wards, 250 respondents from different income groups (HIG, MIG & LIG) have taken into account in order to know the ground realities and their perception. Observation method and discussion was conducted with the MNN officials. The total amount of waste generation is directly related to the density of population, economic status and land use pattern of the particular area. There is positive correlation between waste generation and socio-economic development. Per capita of municipal solid was 0.46 kg per capita/per day in 2006 which touched the figure of 0.53 kg per capita/per day. All the high population density wards have high rate of waste production and low density of population zones, corresponding with low quantity of waste generated. The street sweepings and collection of garbage from the receptacles are carried out by the sanitary workers of civic agencies in Meerut. In this stage, collection is not very efficient even though large numbers of private sweepers are engaged in waste collection from door to door at a nominal charge, particularly in big apartments and group housing societies. Key word: Solid Waste, Generation, Collection, Dustbins, Disposal, Meerut Introduction Land resources are the most important features of environment which is utilized for the satisfaction of human wants (Pandey, 2014). Urban environmental sustainability assessment is increasingly a part of urban planning, from the perspective of mitigating local and global impacts. Today, 54 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, which is expected to increase to 60 per cent by the year 2030. The urbanization has several negative impacts on environment in which urban solid waste management is considered as one of the most serious and challenging issues confronting municipal authorities in developing countries (Bhat and B., 2018). Waste is an unavoidable by product of most human activities. (Anand, 2010).Nowadays, solid waste management is a problem of major relevance for all local and national authorities. Solid waste management fall under the sustainable development goals 6 and 7 about the clean water and sanitation and affordable and clean energy. In urban area, there are several problems such as lack of adequate housing facilities, large scale unplanned haphazard urban sprawl and illegal encroachments, increasing no of vehicles leading to vehicle congestion and crowding, Lack of access to treated water supply and depletion of water level, Inadequate health and sanitation facilities, limited land space and increasing pressure on ecological services, lack of comprehensive solid waste management systems. Many cities face the problem of uncollected municipal solid waste littered. Tourists are many problems including solid waste management in Dharamsala town. Wastes generated from different activities concentrate human health hazards and have negative implication on the man and environment (Anand and Singh, 2012). Markandey (2016) prepared a report of the work which has been done during the 20122016 on urban geography, including the waste disposal. She found that researches in India connect the issues at global problems in urban areas. Saxena and Khan (2016) have found that quality of life (QOL) determined by various factors including the waste disposal facilities. They have done a research to find the out spatial pattern of environmental