Mumbai has emerged as one of the top 10 dirtiest cities of India, according to the recently published Swachh Survekshan 2025 report. Amid the rising burden of tackling urban waste, Kiran Dighavkar, Deputy Municipal Commissioner of the solid waste management department at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, spoke to Nayonika Bose about the biggest challenges before the civic body and plans to improve the waste management apparatus.
In a recently published survey, Mumbai was ranked eighth among the top 10 dirtiest cities in India. What according to you is the biggest problem for the BMC when it comes to handling waste?
Kiran Dighavkar: The biggest challenge for Mumbai is behavioural patterns among its public. Recently, during a study tour in Singapore, I noticed that sweeping happens only once a day on Sundays, that too, mechanical sweeping. In Mumbai, the irony is that even daily sweeping during the mornings is not sufficient, and we are now starting a second sweeping during the evenings.
In the city, nearly 50 per cent of the population resides in informal settlements where garbage is generated round the clock. Unlike residential societies, which have a specific timing for waste collection, in slums, there is continuous production and throwing of garbage at community spots. That has become a real challenge, which is unique to Mumbai. Even though we have 30,000 labourers cleaning the streets and collecting garbage every morning, in the next two hours, the same bins are filled again.
Furthermore, Mumbai runs 24X7, so the city generates garbage every hour. In such a case, it becomes practically impossible to collect the garbage and do sweeping every hour of the day. Another unique challenge is the huge floating population that generates massive waste. For example, in A ward, the night population is only 1.65 lakh while the daytime population is 40 lakh, owing to people who come here to work. Besides this, hawkers pose another challenge to tackling waste and maintaining cleanliness in Mumbai.
Is there a solution to fixing these behaviour patterns among people?
Kiran Dighavkar: Certainly, but it is a huge challenge to bring about behavioural change in a city like Mumbai, which has a massive population. We are trying our best to do that.
If you take a close look at the solid waste management bylaws of 2025, we have introduced something called the extended producers’ responsibility, which has changed the definition of garbage. Earlier, garbage was termed “municipal waste”. But now, the name “municipal waste” has been changed to simply “waste”, which means that waste is owned by the people, not just the municipal body. The responsibility has now been shifted to the producers of waste, making them more responsible for the garbage they generate. This applies not only to garbage but also to large-scale waste like construction and demolition waste.
How does the new Rs 4,000-crore overhaul plan propose to improve the waste management system in Mumbai?
Kiran Dighavkar: For the past 15 years, the BMC has been hiring vehicles from contractors for garbage collection, while the work of garbage collection is done by the BMC’s own labourers. With different parties involved, it was difficult to fix accountability. Since the contractor was getting payment on a shift basis for vehicle provision, the old system had also led to a lot of inefficiency, as the contractor was not motivated to give more vehicles.
In the new plan, we appoint contractors to provide new vehicles as well as carry out the task of garbage collection, too. This will help us fix the responsibility on the contractor, as he cannot shift responsibility to anyone else. Under the new tender plans, the contractor will now be paid on a weight basis, meaning how much garbage he collects. This will give the contractor the motivation to collect maximum waste. Besides this, in the new plan, we will change the colour, pattern, shape, and capacity of the compactor to phase out the old vehicles, as we have been using the same compactors for the past 15 years. Each compactor is proposed to have much more capacity to accommodate more garbage, so that the number of vehicles will also be reduced.
But the plan has drawn flak in some quarters over concerns of privatisation and jeopardy to the jobs of permanent and contractual conservancy workers.
Kiran Dighavkar: Initially, there had been some insecurity among unions as they were worried that it would impact the work of 5,000 labourers who work as motor loaders. However, in a joint meeting with the unions, we have assured them that these labourers will be given different types of work, like cleaning and second sweeping, and that none of their benefits will be taken away. We have formally signed this agreement, and their concerns have been addressed.
Waste segregation still remains a distant reality in Mumbai. Where does the BMC stand when it comes to source-to-end waste segregation?
Kiran Dighavkar: For this, we have two plans in motion. Under the new tender, we have plans to procure separate vehicles for dry waste collection. To begin with, each contractor has been told to deploy two dry waste collection vehicles in each ward that will cater to housing societies, where people tend to segregate waste in separate bins and bags.
Besides this, in the Development Plan 2034, we have reservations for 96 dry waste segregation centres, of which 46 centres are operational. We have already taken up work to modernise these dry waste centres, wherein automated segregation of dry waste will happen. After this modernisation is complete, all collected dry waste will be transported to these centres, where it will be recycled and resold.
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Construction and demolition waste is now emerging as a new challenge for Mumbai.
Kiran Dighavkar: Years ago, when the Deonar facility was closed, there was a case in the Bombay High Court that anticipated that Mumbai’s waste would increase to 15,000 metric tonnes per day in the next 10-15 years. The main reason for that was construction and demolition waste.
With the rapid redevelopment and infrastructure work happening across the city, today, Mumbai is generating an average of 8,000 metric tonnes of construction and demolition waste per day. This is even more than the city’s garbage, where about 7,000-7,500 metric tonnes of average garbage is generated in Mumbai daily. Since a lot of construction and demolition waste was dumped in an unauthorised manner, it is also one of the root causes for dust pollution, encroachment, mangrove destruction, and silt in the drains. So, checking construction and demolition waste has definitely emerged as one of the most important challenges for Mumbai. We have plans to augment our construction and demolition waste facility, where the waste will be treated and recycled as per the rules of the draft solid waste management rules of 2025. Apart from waste treatment and collection, construction and demolition waste is going to be a top priority for the BMC in the coming times.
