All four centres to sort recyclable waste in Gurugram non-operational since 2024

Officials said recyclable waste is currently reaching Bandhwari without segregation, while plans for MRF locations, capacity and numbers remain undecided.

All four material recovery facilities (MRFs) in Gurugram have been non-operational since June 2024, when the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) terminated its waste-management contract, effectively leaving the city without facilities to sort and recover recyclable waste such as plastic, paper, glass and metal from the city’s daily solid waste, officials said.

The material recovery facility at the garbage collection point in Beriwala Bagh process waste without sorting, seen last week. (Parveen Kumar/Hindustan Times)

Until 2024, there were four MRFs operational at Beriwala Bagh, Badshahpur, Ullawas and Sector 44, said MCG officials.

Gurugram generates around 1,400-1,500 tonnes of waste daily, of which about 313 tonnes is recyclable, MCG officials said. In the absence of operational MRFs, waste is currently being transported to the Bandhwari landfill without segregation, they added.

The MRFs stopped functioning after MCG cancelled the firm’s contract in June 2024, seven years into what officials said was a 20-year agreement, citing poor performance. The firm in question was responsible for both door-to-door waste collection and operation of the MRFs.

Since then, MCG has relied on short-term arrangements for waste collection. Officials said agencies engaged for short periods were unwilling to invest in either operating the existing MRFs or setting up new ones.

The civic body has now awarded long-term door-to-door waste collection contracts, worth an estimated ₹647.78 crore to two other firms.

These two agencies are expected to begin collection operations in November and will also be responsible for setting up MRFs.

MCG executive engineer Sundar Sheoran said discussions were yet to be held with the agencies on where the MRFs would be located.

“The agencies have not yet shared their plans for which secondary collection points they will install the MRFs. From our end, we will ensure that the SCPs are properly developed with adequate boundary walls,” he said.

Officials said MCG and the two agencies are also yet to decide whether the four existing facilities will be revived or new ones built, as well as the number and capacity of the proposed MRFs.

Under the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026, segregated dry waste is required to be sent to MRFs for sorting and recycling. MCG officials said restoring material-recovery capacity would be a priority after the new waste-collection agencies begin operations.

Environmentalist Ruchika Sethi Takkar, founder of Clean Air Bharat, said the absence of MRFs encouraged a “collect-and-dump” approach to waste management.

“MRFs play an important role in recycling and reducing the volume of waste reaching landfill sites,” she said. “Gurugram needs to move from a ‘collect-and-dump’ approach to a system based on segregation, recovery, recycling and accountability.”