how does segration benifit to you wrinte in 100words
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Answer:
Segregation is one of the most important activities that we need to promote and enforce for effective waste management in urban area and to make landfills reduce in size gradually and finally come to no landfills in four-five decades from now. Even in Western Europe where they have been working on developing a scientific waste management systems for the last 30 years or so, nearly one-third of waste is still going to the engineered landfill. In India, too, we cannot have “zero” landfill or “no” landfill overnight. This is not a realistic expectation.
We don’t have the technology to recycle and/or treat all the waste that we produce. Therefore, for the waste that cannot be recycled or treated, we do need a resting place, and that is usually an engineered landfill in developed countries. Even 100% residual from waste incinerators cannot be reused, only few countries are using the ash from waste-to-energy plants and even in those cases they have to discard some of the ashes in landfills.
Segregation of waste components should be encouraged at source, the new MSW rules 2016 do that. What we need is to build capacity at the municipal level to enforce and implement source segregation. If you and I do source segregation at our homes but they get mixed up in the collection vehicle along the route to treatment plant, there is no point of doing source segregation. Also, educating people to do source segregation at home takes time. For now, if needed, we should also look at the options of doing segregation at a central facility. The use of any proper treatment technology requires separated waste. For treatment technologies, waste needs to be clean enough for effective treatment.
The compost plant should get only the biodegradable, organic, fraction of the waste to produce good compost which will meet regulatory standards, and can be used in agricultural and other applications. And the compost plants should be able to sell the compost to generate enough revenue for long-term viability.
For waste incinerators, too, mixed waste is a problem. Mixed waste leads to higher residual percentages in the waste-to-energy plants, and that takes a hit on the financial and other resources in the treatment facility. In Western Europe, the average residue at mass burn incinerator is around 10% but in Indian conditions, it is 30%. This is mainly due to a mix of waste streams. Big concrete pieces are also a safety hazard for waste-to-energy plants. Since, the city collection contracts are typically based on tonnage, the collection contractor mixes bricks, concrete and other heavy pieces in MSW to get higher revenue.