Chennai, like a number of cities elsewhere in the country, is set to face an unprecedented crisis in Solid Waste Management (SWM) in the coming years. Garbage, and how we deal with it, is something that has drifted in and out of the greater civic consciousness of the city over the past two decades and there are a number of organisations and individuals who have devoted time and attention to this issue in the city. However, successes have generally been short-lived and throughout this period the city has been moving steadily towards a crisis point. The crisis will be one of garbage going uncollected, possibly indefinitely, as it will have nowhere to go once Kodungaiyur and Perungudi, the two massive dumpsites that serve the city, can hold no more.

The Corporation’s response to this eventuality has so far mainly been to scout alternative dumpsites – unsuccessfully. There are many voices in the city, however, including the Initiative for Waste, Informal Workers, and Chennai’s Future (a coalition of Transparent Chennai, Madras Institute for Development Studies, and Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives) who oppose such a path forward. Dumping/land-filling is both an environmentally unsustainable and socially unjust way of dealing with the ever-increasing output of garbage. The Initiative is one of a number of groups and individuals in the city that advocates instead for a decentralised “Zero-Waste” model of SWM that emphasises segregation at source, maximum resource recovery (through recycling, composting etc.) and protection of the livelihood rights of people currently supporting themselves and their families off the city’s waste (rag-pickers and scrap dealers).

A decentralised model would entail that whatever waste is created within a particular geographic area (such as a ward) be dealt with within that area. This is a more sustainable and responsible way of dealing with waste than centralised dumping. Cities such as Bangalore and Pune, as well as numerous small towns, have already adopted such a system and while there have been difficulties, it is the clearest and most favourable way forward.

Towards this end, the Initiative has, over the past year, endeavoured to build consensus amongst various groups of stakeholders on a well-defined path forward for SWM in the city. In the course of these consultations with members of civil society, workers’ groups, the scientific community and the city government, the idea of a sustainable and inclusive Zero-Waste pilot project in one corporation ward was evolved. Since then, it has been engaged in mobilising citizen support as well as creating research and data to help advocate for and anchor a potential pilot project in Ward 173 that would aim at being decentralised, Zero-Waste, and inclusive of the informal sector (rag-pickers who are responsible as of now for almost all recycling in most Indian cities).

Transparent Chennai, on behalf of the Initiative, conducted a detailed mapping and survey exercise in Ward 173 to establish both the number and nature of households and commercial establishments in the ward, as well as to assess the generation and composition of the waste created in the ward.

This extensive study forms the basis of a detailed proposal that will be handed over to the Corporation of Chennai for the planning and implementation of the pilot project. Community participation is a key component of this effort and a number of community meetings have been held in the Ward to disseminate the proposal and receive feedback. It is also available to the general public at www.transparentchennai.com where you can read the proposal and give feedback and suggestions, which might be incorporated into the final output.

As has been mentioned above, the Initiative is also engaged in creating research about, and advocating for, the informal waste sector. Waste-pickers, more popularly known as rag-pickers, are among the most marginalised citizens of the city, yet it is their labour that accounts for the only progressive or sustainable waste recycling in the city. Waste-pickers divert hundreds, of tons of waste from the dumps every day, buying time for the rest of us who only create waste and do little to lessen its impact on the environment outside our own doorsteps. However, waste-pickers are socially stigmatised, work in extremely unsafe circumstances, and are vulnerable to police and other types of harassment. The safeguarding of their livelihood rights (continued access to waste/jobs) and improving the quality of their lives are an equally important challenge facing the city and its policy makers. There is currently an on- going effort to get the Corporation of Chennai to recognise the labour and benefits these people make available to the city and to issue them I.D. cards that would both validate their labour as well as make it possible to lift them out of the poverty and marginalisation they currently endure.

To conclude, it is apparent to anyone who pays attention that Chennai is at a critical point as far as SWM is concerned. It is essential that citizens around the city begin to hold the city government accountable for chronic poor service delivery and insist on better planning and implementation. Decentralised, Zero-Waste SWM, emphasising segregation at source, is especially something we as citizens must open our minds to, as the continued refusal to take individual responsibility for one’s own waste is most unbecoming of a citizenry that claims to aim towards an evolved civic consciousness.