Formal and informal swm in Hyderabad (India)

INDIA IS FACING serious environmental problems such as waste1 ,water and air pollution due to the fast growth of urbanisation and industrialisation. The subject of solid waste management (SWM) in Hyderabad (India) represents one of particular interest for this 23rd WEDC conference on ‘partnership and innovation’. This paper will represent a unique scheme which is based on a combination of partnership and innovation between the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad, Non-governmental Organisations and the citizens in providing SWM services to the city. The post-independence period of India, which will mark its fiftieth anniversary this year, has brought much prosperity, but also an increase in the generation of waste without a simultaneous adjustment of waste management services, resulting in much uncollected waste. This has been one of the factors which has finally led to the emergence of a public health crisis. The steady increase in municipal waste management cost, however, has prevented national and local governments from solving the crisis with traditional methods used since the colonial times. Although technocratic solutions still prevail in India today, the national and some local governments are looking at other alternative methods to the current waste crisis. In India in addition to the formal municipal waste management sector, there is also a thriving informal recycling sector which enables a large portion of the urban poor to make their living. The potential of integrating these two sectors, I believe, holds the key to solving the existing crisis. This paper therefore examines both the formal waste management and informal recycling sector in Hyderabad (India). This is done through a case study of the community-based waste disposal scheme which is one of the first to be pursued by a local government in India. The case study reveals a new model of solid waste management emerging through the waste disposal scheme in Hyderabad. This scheme promotes the recycling of organic and non-organic waste at the neighbourhood level. It represents a more ecocentric approach to waste management which is based on low-impact technology and small-scale production. The scheme specifically intends to integrate street waste pickers into the municipal waste management system by employing them for doorto-door collection, separation of waste and organic waste recycling. The attitudes of citizens towards the scheme and especially towards the role of waste pickers in assisting the scheme are essential points that are analysed. For this reason a survey of middle-income households and lowincome households in Hyderabad was conducted during 1993-94. The results from this survey reveal new views on waste management emerging in contemporary India.