Is Mumbai ready for BMC’s new solid waste management system?
Mumbai's solid waste management system is set for major changes, including user fees, waste segregation, and outsourcing collection to tackle rising waste challenges.
Mumbai: Change is afoot in the solid waste management system of one of the world’s most populous cities. From the type of waste that will be picked up from homes, to how and who will collect it, where it will go, what will become of it, and how much residents will pay for the waste collection, the pot of garbage is being stirred.

Mumbai produces a mammoth 7,300 metric tonnes of waste every day. With some exceptions, all this trash travels to dumping grounds in Kanjurmarg and Deonar.
Propelled in different directions by centrally prescribed waste management rules, mounting expenditure and liabilities, an unmatched scarcity of space due to an ever-growing population, and the very persistent nature of garbage, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has set into motion a legion of changes that will play out in the coming months.
Having last updated the city’s SWM byelaws in 2006, an overhaul was due. In the interim years, the central government has rolled out laws for different categories of waste, including plastic, construction and demolition waste, and e-waste. Mumbai needed to catch up.
In April, the BMC released its solid waste management (SWM) draft byelaws, opening them up to the flood of suggestions and objections from citizens. The changes were all there for citizens to see: a user fee, starting at ₹100 for homes; mandatory waste segregation; and higher penalties for violations and non-compliance.
Many of the rules in the byelaws are not exactly new, with the civic body having mandated them in parts through circulars and the sort. For instance, bulk waste generators are already mandated to process their wet waste themselves, but only 36% of them do so, according to the nonprofit Praja Foundation’s latest report on civic facilities.
User fee
Arguably the most controversial change proposed is charging a fee for solid waste management. “This has been a long time coming,” said an officer from the BMC’s SWM department. The BMC is around eight years behind in charging a user fee, which the central government mandated in the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016.
“Covid-19 derailed everything,” said the officer, explaining why it took so long. “That was followed by political turmoil in the state government and rustling in the SWM department. We began drafting the new byelaws in 2022, but things have kept getting in the way. So, after the state elections in 2024, when we had some semblance of stability in the government and in the department, despite there being an absence of corporators, we knew we had to go ahead with it.”
A user fee is not a garbage tax, as the money will have to be spent on the particular task of SWM, explained Shyam Asolekar, former professor at the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering (CESE), IIT Bombay. “But the BMC does need to justify the fee it is proposing to charge. ₹500 per month for the average house will add up to a significant amount for most. And if the BMC is demanding money for a reason, it also needs to properly justify the amount and how it will be spent, as the citizen is now a partner in the enterprise,” he said.
Service-based contracts
Another significant change being brought about by the BMC is outsourcing waste collection to contractors. Currently, the BMC employs a hybrid model, wherein it hires waste compactors from contractors and the civic body’s staff does the door-to-door collection, transportation and the rest. “However, this has proven to be cost-ineffective and involves coordinating with multiple agencies,” said Kiran Dighavkar, deputy municipal commissioner, SWM.
Coincidentally, the BMC’s seven-year contracts for these compactors are coming to an end. “So now that it is time to renew the contracts, we are choosing to go with a service-based contract, in which the contractor will supply the vehicles, the manpower, the bins, and the complaint management system,” added Dighavkar.
In the old system, the BMC paid the contractor according to the shift and the number of trips they took, along with paying its own staff. This led to an average cost of ₹3,627 per tonne, according to Dighavkar. “The new system pays the contractor by the weight of the waste they collect, coming up to ₹2,864 per tonne on average,” he said. This process also ensures fewer complaints, with a central contractor responsible for the entire operation of the wards under them, he added. Eight contractors will carry out the entire task in the city, with two to three wards under them.
However, some experts vouch for a more decentralised approach. “The more decentralised the system is, the better, so that all the city’s waste is not relegated to one place and forgotten about,” said Sharad Kale, former scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, who developed a biogas waste plant. “The BMC needs to place waste reduction as its central objective, which includes segregation. For this, it will need continuous awareness programmes because most people do not care enough to do the extra step.”
With labour unions worried that this would mean phasing out thousands of jobs of workers who load the garbage in the compactors, drivers, garage staff and the like, the BMC has promised to employ them and assured that none of their benefits would be affected.
Waste segregation
However, this outsourced means of waste collection also allows the BMC an added player in possibly the hardest task in the process: waste segregation.
“With the contractor responsible for door-to-door collection, we don’t want to allow them to be able to wash their hands of segregation,” said Dighavkar. “This is why we’ve taken care to mention that they will also be responsible for awareness activities and increasing segregation.”
To begin with, the civic body has started separate waste collection services for sanitary waste, pet waste and e-waste on a volunteer basis, encouraging housing societies and commercial institutes to sign up. The contractors have also been tasked with phasing out community bins where neighbourhoods dump waste by the fifth year of their function.
If all goes to plan, the increased segregation will require more dry waste segregation centres (DWSCs), where dry waste can be routed for recycling.
“We are currently working on a proposal to modernise a few of the 56 DWSCs we have,” said Jaydeep More, assistant commissioner of the A ward, who has been a part of the effort. “Right now, the centres are given to NGOs who carry out the segregation manually. This leaves a lot of room for efficiency, which is why we want to supplement the sorting on any five or 10 of them with machines and increase their capacity, so more dry waste is funnelled through them. The BMC will have to expend the capital expenditure needed to set the centres up through a consultant, but it will be worth it in the long run.”
Dumping grounds
If this spread of changes weren’t enough, the fate of the city’s waste dumping grounds, too, is under a question mark.
Earlier this month, the Bombay high court declared 119.91 hectares of the 141-hectare Kanjurmarg dumping ground a “protected forest”, overturning a 2009 de-notification that had allowed its use as a landfill. The BMC has decided to challenge the order in the Supreme Court.
Parallelly, the civic body is embarking on a three-year-long process—an ambitious target—for the bioremediation of 18.5 million tonnes of legacy waste at Deonar dumping ground. The move is controversial as it’s happening just months after the Maharashtra government approved the transfer of 124 acres of the 311-acre landfill to the Adani Group-led Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) to build homes for residents deemed ineligible for housing within Dharavi.
Underlying all these changes is the immutable fact that they all depend on implementation. But the introduction of the user fee is expected to earn the BMC ₹687 crore in a year from homes alone. “Once the user charge is charged, the responsibility of providing world-class services to the citizens will also fall on the corporation,” said Dighavkar.
Time will be the judge.
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