Swachh ka saamna: Navi Mumbai beats Mumbai in all-India cleanliness indicators

Garbage dumped on a road at Hindu Colony in Dadar. Photo: Mid-day File Pic.

Mumbai ranked 37 out of the 48 cities surveyed across the country in the latest Swachh Survekshan or Clean Survey, conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Navi Mumbai fared better, finishing as the fourth cleanest city after Indore, Surat and Vijayawada. While the financial capital slipped two ranks from last year, it secured the top position in innovation and best practices in the category of waste management.

Wasted opportunities

Mulund Dumping Ground. Photo: Mid-day File pic.

Mumbai's continuing garbage problem has hurt its performance. According to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) latest Environment Status Report (ESR), the approximate quantity of solid waste generated in Mumbai is over 6,500-6,800 metric tonnes per day. According to the civic body's report, the city's major dumping grounds at Deonar, Karjat and Mulund are nearly exhausting their capacities.

The work of recovering the Mulund Dumping Ground by processing existing waste is underway and the BMC has missed several deadlines to complete the work at the site. Spread over 24 hectares, the Mulund dump yard had been in use since 1967. Mid-day reported in early November that the work at Mulund dumping ground hasn't gathered the required momentum due to multiple issues including the issue of management of ash, shortage of manpower due to lockdown and the monsoon, among others.

A community toilet being constructed at Govandi. Photo: Mid-day File Pic.

The civic body's ESR report states that Mumbai was declared open defecation free (ODF) in 2017, but where does the city stand now? It scored 300 out of 700 marks in ODF status, while Navi Mumbai and Thane scored 1,600 and 1,100 out of 1,800 respectively in the same category. As per a Mid-day report last June, an RTI filed by Praja Foundation revealed that while the BMC cleared proposals worth Rs 422 crore in January 2019 for 22,774 toilets with a target to build them in a year, it managed to construct only about 20 per cent of them after two years. The report stated that the civic body did not build a single community toilet in 2020, citing pandemic management as one of the reasons for not meeting the target.

Plans and projects afoot

In the months following the lockdown and in the run up to the civic body elections, the BMC has been actively focusing on building the infrastructure for waste management and on decentralising the waste management process, including community participation. Recently, the Minister of Environment and Tourism, Aditya Thackeray, inaugurated an organic waste-to-energy processing centre in ‘D' ward. The centre is developed by AeroCare Clean Energy, and will process wet waste which is essentially food waste and convert it to electricity which will be used by the civic authorities for public lighting in the areas.

The outside of the waste-to-energy processing centre in D ward. Photo: Mid-day file pic.

In the latest Swachh Survekshan Survey, however, Mumbai scored zero in garbage-free status despite having applied for a five-star ranking this year. Last year too, the city did not get any marks out of 1,100 for a garbage-free status (GFS). Over the years, the BMC has introduced several waste collection methods focusing on door-to-door segregation of dry and wet waste. According to the ESR, the current segregation percentage of Mumbai is around 82 percent.

In August 2021, under its ‘Vision 2030' project, the BMC launched a citizens' survey seeking responses on proposed reforms and ideas on waste segregation and management, which will help the city develop a roadmap for the next 10 years. The objective is to make Mumbai the cleanest global city by 2030.

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