Budapest: Today, streets and corners littered with garbage are a common sight in almost every Indian city. What’s more, when municipalities actually pick up the trash, they dump it directly in landfills. Until a few months ago when I moved to Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, I thought this situation was inevitable. Then, I travelled to several municipalities in Europe and realized that cities are not only able to keep their streets clear and clean — they are also making money from their waste. One of the best examples in Europe comes from Sweden, which has one of the most sophisticated municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems: less than 1 percent of the garbage produced by Swedish homes ends up in the landfill. The other ninety-nine percent is converted to power, recycled or composted. Similarly, Germany has reached a level of efficiency where some German waste-to-energy plants have actually had to start importing other countries’ trash to serve as fuel.

Back in India, we are far from this state. India is suffering from a crisis in MSW management that is worsening by the day. The amount of waste is rapidly increasing due to urbanization, population growth and unplanned development. Most Indian municipalities are cash-starved and are not able to handle the massive and increasing load of urban waste they receive. The result is that most municipal waste ends up in landfills — which are rapidly expanding both in number and in area. This is a becoming a serious threat to the health of people and the environment.

In such a grave scenario, municipalities (which are already struggling for resources) will need to implement smart policies to address the issue. They can learn from the European Union (EU) model which is aimed at becoming a zero landfill waste disposals and recycling society. Basically, EU waste legislation introduces a five-step waste hierarchy where prevention is the best option, followed by re-use, recycling and energy generation, with disposal such as landfill as the last resort. This tiered approach makes a shift away from thinking about waste as an unwanted burden to seeing it as a valued resource. If municipalities follow the EU model, they could generate income at every stage of waste management. They can then use this money to create programmes to incentivize people and MSW workers to become partners and stakeholders in cleaning the cities.

However, some might question whether this EU model could ever work in India. The answer is best explained by Dr. Zoltán Illés, former Hungarian Minister of State for Environment who said, “India can become waste-free if they implement the EU’s model. Moreover, energy generated through waste could be used to provide electricity to millions of Indians. Thus, Indian municipalities would become richer and people will be happy and participatory in waste management.”

Before talking about the EU model in detail and how India could benefit, it is imperative to understand just how much waste the country is generating. According to the May 2014 report of the task force of the Planning Commission on Waste to Energy, a total of 1,33,760 tonnes per day (TPD) of garbage is generated every day. Out of this, only about 91,152 TPD is collected and only 25,884 TPD is treated. The report further notes that more than 80% is disposed of indiscriminately at dump yards in an unhygienic manner by the municipal authorities, leading to health problems and environmental degradation. Unfortunately, when India landfills this unsorted waste, it is also throwing away at least three opportunities to generate wealth from its trash.

In the EU model, waste is collected door to door and then segregated using advanced machines. Generally, MSW consists of biodegradable, plastic, metallic and other types of material. For this model to work in India, municipalities will need to invest in these state-of-the art machines — but there will be enough income generation from the process to cover the costs. Once the waste is separated, the plastic (especially PVC) and metallic waste is segregated and is recycled. Any organic biodegradable waste is sent for composting and generation of biogas. Given India’s current levels of waste, municipalities could generate 5.3 million tonnes of compost annually. This is where the first two lost economic opportunities come in: municipalities could be selling this compost to farmers at a reasonable price and generating profits, and could be selling biogas to generate useful income.

Finally, in the EU, all the left out waste materials are then converted into refuse-derived fuel (RDF) fuel — which is produced by shredding and dehydrating solid waste with a waste converter technology. This RDF fuel is sent to incinerators, or to power plants that use it to produce and supply power to households. The authors of this article visited one of the best incinerators in the EU, which collects municipal waste from the city of Budapest and supplies power to more than 25,000 households. “RDF is very important and its calorific value is similar to brown coal. Thus, it is a really important resource,” added Illés.

This is India’s third lost economic opportunity. The country’s unused RDF waste could generate 439 MW of power — enough to light more than 5 million households. And this opportunity will only grow. In the future, India’s total waste generation is projected to grow from 165 million tonnes (by 2031) to 436 million tonnes (by 2050), and if utilized properly, the country could produce 1084 MW and 2830 MW of annual power, respectively, from this.

In short, India has a great opportunity to learn from the EU and fix its waste crisis. Imagine an India where major cities — be it Bombay or Delhi — are garbage free, have clean streets, produce extra power for a growing population, and generate much-needed money for other municipal services. India should not miss out on this opportunity to clean its streets while turning its garbage into gold.

The authors are freelance journalists and are currently pursuing Erasmus Mundus environmental sciences programme at Central European University