December 2024 deadline for closing waste dumps in Delhi

Chief secretary Naresh Kumar directed that 100% segregation of waste at source be achieved by December 2024 at all 272 wards in Delhi

All dhalaos in Delhi will be shut down by December 2024, and will be replaced by material recovery facilities (MRFs) to ensure proper segregation of waste, chief secretary Naresh Kumar has told Delhi’s urban local bodies in a recent review meeting on the status of solid waste management in the city.

MRFs will be used to store non-combustible solid waste on a temporarily basis to facilitate sorting of different items, the official said. (HT Archive)

The chief secretary also directed that 100% segregation of waste at source be achieved by December 2024 at all 272 wards in Delhi.

MRFs will be used to store non-combustible solid waste on a temporarily basis to facilitate sorting of different items, the official said.

There are three urban local bodies in the Capital — Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), Delhi Cantonment Board (DCB) and New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). According to their officials, Delhi at present generates 11,328 TPD of waste daily, with only around 7,802 TPD being processed.

“It was informed by NDMC and DCB that there are no dhalaos existing in their jurisdictional areas, while at the same time, dhalaos are still operational under MCD as secondary storage points and in order to maintain a garbage free city, these points need to be discouraged for functional and aesthetic reasons. MCD has submitted that all the remaining 638 dhalaos will be shut down by December 31, 2024, with only some being retained for disposal of silt and street sweeping purposes,” said Kumar at the April 6 meeting, the minutes of which were released on Tuesday.

At present, 170 MRFs are operational in Delhi, which can process 317 tonne per day (TPD) of waste. While 156 of these come under MCD, 11 come under DCB and three under NDMC.

Kumar further directed that a website or portal be created by June 30 to record daily waste generation, collection, recycling and processing of municipal solid waste at sanitary landfills and dump sites by the three local bodies, which will also have to carry out third-party audits of their waste collection and processing by September 30 this year.

According to the three waste management agencies, 100% door-to-door collection was at present being done in Delhi. However, the chief secretary asked to ensure that 100% of this waste is transported to solid waste processing facilities.

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For this, it was decided that all urban local bodies ensure that their waste collection vehicles are equipped with GPS devices and monitored through a central mechanism, besides ensuring scientific disposal of waste.

New waste-to-energy plants at Ghazipur and Narela Bawana, and the expansion of an existing one at Okhla, are expected to add another 6,000 TPD in processing capacity by August 2027, the officials told the CS at the meeting.

The meeting was held as part of a review by the National Green Tribunal-appointed Solid Waste Monitoring Committee, which in February was asked to fix timelines of all waste management projects in Delhi and review their status periodically.

A senior municipal official from the sanitation department said that dhalaos are being closed due to increased mechanisation of the garbage collection process owing to the deployment of mechanical mobile and fixed garbage compactors that reduce the volume of the garbage. “One compactor station can easily take up the volume of garbage that was earlier handled by two to three dhalao sites and it frees up the old open sites. Moreover, as more and more door-to-door collection of waste starts, the need for open dump sites like dhalaos will go down,” the official said, requesting anonymity.

Atin Biswas, a waste management expert and programme director of the municipal solid waste sector at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said MRFs are necessary for effective management and segregation of waste. “Dhalaos highlight an improper waste management system as mixed waste can simply be dumped there. Instead, we need MRFs where only dry waste should be dumped. This dry waste can then be segregated further and sent for recycling,” Biswas said.