Municipal Solid Waste Management in South Assam: Current trend, Scope and challenges for growing Mini City Silchar, Assam, India.

Abstract

Municipal solid waste management is a humongous problem for majority of developing countries across the world. Spontaneous commercial, residential and infrastructural development due to population explosion has caused negative impacts on the inhabiting environment. Unplanned townscapes and lack of proper scientific and technical expertise in MSW management has complicated the problems further. In the current paper, we tried to investigate the root cause of such common urban problems considering Silchar Mini City as one of the fastest growing population hubs in south Assam. The population of the city is nearly two lakhs according to the census of 2011, thus generating around 85 MT (metric ton) of Municipal waste every day which consists of house hold waste (50%), market waste (39%), street waste (6%), and other commercial wastes including the E-waste in total (5%). The per capita rate of waste generation is 240-250 gram per day on average. The current study assesses the present trends, scopes and the way forward in sustainable municipal solid waste management in coming times in Silchar City. Such studies should also be undertaken for rapidly developing cities across India to generate a database of city wise waste generation across the country. This would also provide a roadmap for the techniques adopted in sustainable management of the waste.