Film screened for minister glorifies defunct compost plants in Gurugram

A documentary to showcase the Gurugram municipal corporation’s accomplishments, screened on March 17, drew the residents’ ire after it showed a non-functioning composting plant in the Nirvana Country area as a paragon of waste management. The movie also mentioned other compost-making plants but when a DNA team visited these plants, none of them were found to be fully functional.

Among the viewers was Union Minister of State for Planning Rao Inderjit Singh. The documentary emphasised the efforts of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG)  to help various Residential Welfare Associations (RWAs) in the city to make compost out of wet waste.

The documentary, showing the Nirvana Country Township plant situated on a vast stretch of civic land, was shot just a couple of days ahead of the screening. The plant, however, has not been functioning for the last few months, revealed a caretaker on the site. An RWA volunteer, who was quoted in the documentary, said: “The MCG officials visit the plant regularly.” RWA President Sanu Kapila said: “The machine is non-functional but we are composting manually.”

Most of the people who saw the documentary later were left bewildered.

According to sources, MCG’s own plant in part-1 area of Sector 15, which cost nearly Rs 50 lakh to set up, is shut. The waste is lying in the open, giving rise to a foul smell. When queried about the plant, which was also shown as functional in the documentary, MCG Additional Commissioner Amit Khatri said: “Due to the construction on the National Highway (NH), the plant is not working. But, residents are segregating waste on their own.”

The residents living close to the plant, however, told DNA: “It only processes garden waste generated in parks and on roads. We give our waste to waste collectors.” Other residents confirmed that they do not segregate the waste. Waste collector Rajan Mahto said: “We collect garbage bags from every house and take out useful waste, such as plastic and glass.” He also confirmed that wet and dry waste is not segregated.

According to the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) reports, municipal agencies in India spend 5-25 per cent of their budget on Solid Waste Management (SWM), of which collection and transportation constitute 80-95 per cent. Most of the Gurugram waste is dumped at the Bandhwari plant situated in the Aravalli range.

Meanwhile, many RWAs in Gurugram that voluntarily took up the waste segregation and composting initiatives long before the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and were fully efficient were not even mentioned in the documentary.

In 2013, various environmentalists had highlighted the hazardous impact of waste on the ecosystem, following which various citizen-based environmental groups and RWAs had initiated a de-centralised system of waste management, without any support of the civic body.

In 2014, the Vaastu Housing Society became the first RWA in the city to set up a compost plant. “It cost us almost Rs 1.25 lakh and we pay nearly Rs 4,000 for its maintenance. Now, we don’t have to buy manure for gardens and pots,” RWA President Ajay Nayar said. The Society received three national level awards under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. It was also identified as the second-most proactive RWA by the MoUD.  

Similarly Regency Park 2, a condominium housing more than 500 families, has been able to segregate more than 95 per cent of its wet waste generated daily. Explaining its functioning, citizen volunteer Priya Mehrish said: “It took us a few days to make our residents aware of the process. We have strict policies. If the waste is not segregated -- dry waste in blue bags and wet waste in green bags -- we do not collect it from houses at all.”

Sahara Grace, another such association, has also seen success in this regard. RWA President Mona Jain said: “We have a lot of gardens and they require a lot of manure. We decided to make compost organically in our own residential complex. It cuts the cost of buying fertilisers and manure from outside.”

According to the SWM Rules, 2016, issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, it is the duty of the local authority and the municipality to framebye-laws for waste segregation and to create public awareness.

According to Swati Sambyal of the Centre of Science and Environment, an expanding city like Gurugram is a critical spot for biodiversity and environment. “Centralised waste management requires a lot of labour and is a threat to environment. Decentralisation is the only way forward,” she said.

“What is really happening in Gurugram is that the municipality is setting up costly plants without the involvement of waste generators. It should first spread awareness among the citizens,” she further said.

The dwellers of low-income areas, however, are still not aware of the decentralised waste management system and depend fully on collectors who dump all the waste in landfill sites.

When queried about the difference between the approaches of MCG and private RWAs, Sourabh Bardhan, a service provider for compost plants, said: “There is no involvement of waste generators in MCG plants, but RWAs are involving residents.”