Question

how can dry waste be managed

Answer 1

There is difference between the best waste management and practical waste management. When we say practical it means in terms of the total population of a country what is the best possible way to manage the waste. For example it is easy to manage a country with smaller population compared to population like India in terms of politically and culturally. Politically because enforcement of policies are made at the political level both locally and centrally. And culturally because the way we manage our own waste and our respect towards environment without any personal gain will ultimately result in lesser waste.

Best waste management practise is a co-ordination of many things :

Source segregation(like separating the wet and dry waste, recyclable plastics etc.) by the Individuals at houses/restaurantsTransporting these different types of segregated waste by separate trucks hired by Municipal corporation to different plants which manage these wastes separately.For example dry waste goes to a Waste to Energy plant, Wet waste(more of a food waste) goes to a compost/ biomethanation plant and recyclable(like plastics, metals etc) goes to plastic and metal recycling plant

The problem with above model is that for this the government has to invest more in the infrastructure and enforce the people do the source segregation. Government does not have incentive to do such process because there is still enough amount of land available for dumping the waste(so why put up any infra). Secondly there are few cities which have some infra, which is waste to energy/waste to fuel, but these plants take the all types of waste as input to their system rather than segregated one.