Abstract
Man grew. Man created. Man wasted. The boom in human population along with the advancement in technology and lifestyle over the last century has put mankind in a bind. The waste generated from human households has evolved from being organic to the present complex mix of organic, plastic, waste and hazardous products diffuse. If not managed properly, the unprecedented surge in this waste exposes the entire living population and the environment to a host of threats. For a country like India, with swiftly increasing waste generation and availability of limited resources for its treatment and disposal, the need to have an effective plan to handle municipal solid waste has become extremely urgent. Progressive laws and an active judiciary alone are insufficient to provide the relief against this threat. There is a need to devise a municipal solid waste management plan which takes into consideration all aspects of a society ranging from the demographics, geographical location, economic condition, day-to-day lifestyle, moral strength of the society to the effectiveness of laws and legal regulations.
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Notes
- 1.
Setting up waste processing and disposal facilities by 2003; regular monitoring every six months; improvement of existing landfill sites by 2001 and identification of new landfill sites by 2002.
- 2.
Section 3(xv) of the Rules define Municipal Solid Waste in an inclusive manner. “Municipal Solid Waste includes commercial and residential wastes generated in a municipal or notified areas in either solid or semi-solid form excluding industrial hazardous wastes but including treated bio-medical wastes.”
- 3.
Class—I cities are all those urban agglomerations/towns which have at least 1,00,000 persons as population.
- 4.
National Green Tribunal was established for expeditious disposal of cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests and natural resources including enforcement of legal rights relating to the environment and giving relief and compensation for damages.
The matter Almitra Patel v. Union of India & Ors. was taken up by the National Green Tribunal upon transfer from the Supreme Court of India for looking into the compliance of the MSW Rules, 2000 on 14th October 2014.
- 5.
The Clean India Campaign was launched across the length and breadth of the country on 2nd October 2014 with an aim to clean India by 2nd October 2019. P.M. India. Towards a Swacch Bharat. http://pmindia.gov.in/en/government_tr_rec/swachh-bharat-abhiyan-2/. Accessed 18 October 2018.
- 6.
The National Green Tribunal is taking up matters to rejuvenate and restore the two rivers to its original state by passing various orders and constituting committees to ensure compliance of its directions. The directions includes penalization, in the form of environmental compensation, against disposal/ dumping of garbage in the rivers or their banks. Manoj Mishra v. Union of India. [Original Application 06/2012]; Ganga Action Parivar v. State of Uttarakhand and Ors. [ Original Application No. 523 of 2014]; Madhumangal Shukla v. Union of India and Ors. [Original Application 136 of 2014].
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Kaur, M. (2019). Municipal Solid Waste Management in India: Why Judicial Activism and Legislative Interventions Have Failed to Effectively Address This Issue?. In: Lim, M. (eds) Charting Environmental Law Futures in the Anthropocene. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9065-4_17
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