Emissions Associated with the Transportation of Municipal Solid Waste in Mumbai

Abstract

Mumbai is the largest metropolitan city in India with an estimated population of 12.4 million inhabitants in 2011. The city generates ~9,000 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) daily with the average waste generation rate of 0.45 kg per capita per day. The generated waste is collected and transported to the disposal sites. In addition to the greenhouse gas (GHG) released from a disposal site, emissions are also released while transportation of MSW by using diesel-fuelled vehicles. Hence, there is a need to determine the amount of emissions generated by these diesel vehicles into the environment if we want to curb these emissions. Objective of this work is to evaluate emissions from transportation of MSW for Mumbai city. An analysis was done to ascertain the emissions produced by the diesel vehicles while transporting MSW. The pollutants (CO₂, CO, HC, NO_x and PM) were evaluated based on the vehicle kilometres travelled method. The results show that CO₂, CO, HC, NO_x and PM were 67,401.38 tonnes/year, 579.11 tonnes/year, 107.36 tonnes/year, 613.51 tonnes/year and 99.94 tonnes/year, respectively. The results show that the transportation of MSW also plays an important role in the contribution of pollutants especially GHGs to the atmosphere. The total global warming potential (GWP) from the transportation of MSW is obtained as 0.07 million tonnes CO₂ eq. per year which is approximately 2.8% of the total GWP resulted from the present MSW management system in Mumbai.