India stares at biomedical waste crisis
PANDEMIC With cases rising, cities are struggling to dispose of mounds of discarded masks, gloves and other PPE
nNEW DELHI/MUMBAI : Mahadev is squatting at a corner of the mountain of waste in north Delhi’s Bhalswa landfill, hunting for plastic in any form. The work of the 45-year-old, who uses only one name, is crucial: the more plastic is recycled, the better it is for the planet as plastic takes anywhere between two decades and five centuries to decompose, choking rivers, and releasing harmful chemicals and heavy metals into water and soil.
Mahadev’s work has increased in the past three months and also become more dangerous. He now skims through dozens of discarded masks and plastic gloves with his bare hands.
The personal protective equipment, the mask, the gloves, the face shield, the shoe cover, and the sanitiser bottle have two things in common: they protect people – and prevent them from transmitting – from the Sarscov-2 virus; and they are also made up (mostly) of plastic.
The coronavirus pandemic has created a new waste crisis.
Yet, the only protective gear Mahadev wears is a tattered mask, handed to him a few weeks ago by a group of social workers.
“Since April, there is a mound of discarded masks and gloves dumped here. We do not come in any government’s priority list so we have to make do with whatever we have,” says Mahadev.
While there are no figures available for the amount of plastic that has ended up in landfills during the pandemic, local administration in both cities admit there has been an increase in the amount of garbage generated, and that gloves, masks, and personal protection equipment account for at least some bit of the increase. And this is the waste that is collected along with other routine waste. The biomedical waste from hospitals and other facilities is collected and treated differently.
In Delhi, over 40 sanitation workers have tested positive for the virus, and 15 have lost their lives. In Mumbai, 10 workers and two security guards at the city’s two landfills have been infected.
On April 18, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the country’s apex body on the regulation of waste disposal, released a set of guidelines on what to do with Covid-related waste generated by designated sites. Used masks, tissues, head covers, shoe covers, disposable linen gowns, nonplastic and semi plastic coveralls were to be disposed of in a yellow bag meant for incineration at a common biomedical waste treatment facility (CBWTF). So were leftover food, disposable plates, glasses, used masks, tissues and toiletries of Covid-19 patients.
It was also stipulated that those in home isolation, in containment zones, should deposit biomedical waste generated from suspected or recovered Covid-19 patients in yellow bags to authorised waste collectors, engaged by urban local bodies, or at designated centres or hand over these bags to CBWTF operators.“we share the list of everyone in home isolation in the district with the waste collectors. Plus, there are stickers outside the houses, so they know. The garbage from these houses is collected last and taken in a separate vehicle for proper disposal as biomedical waste,” said a senior district official from Delhi.
This waste is either taken to a CBWTF or a waste-to-energy plant, where it is then either incinerated, autoclaved (sterilised for shredding and recyling) or burnt to produce energy.
However, Swati Singh Sambyal, a waste management expert, pointed out that this elaborate exercise gets compromised due to a small but critical issue -lack of segregation. Municipalities pick up biomedical waste from Covid houses, but it often has other household waste mixed in it. Not only does this put the waste collector at risk, it decreases the efficiency of the incinerators at waste treatment plants as it results in greater emissions and unburnt ash.
Residents say they are not even aware of the need for segregation inside homes. “It is scary to touch medical waste that is being used regularly for fear that I may contract the disease as well. So we try to put everything in one bag and give it to BMC because they know how best to separate it,” said a 44-year-old woman from a containment zone in Mumbai’s Worli, whose husband tested positive for Covid-19.
But that’s just one part of the problem. The other is that while guidelines accounted for a new kind of waste – after all, PPE are being used everywhere – the disposal mechanisms simply aren’t equipped to deal with the volume.
The country has 200 biomedical waste treatment facilities; of these two are in Delhi and one is in Mumbai. And, according to CPCB data, these facilities are already running at 60% capacity – that’s a 15% jump since March.
The national average is low, because cases have not surged in many cities, the way they have in Delhi and Mumbai. In these two cities, the CBWTFS are running at 70-75% and 70% capacities, according to CPCB and the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board respectively.
Before the Covid-19 outbreak, a government or a private hospital would typically produce 500 grams of biomedical waste (like syringes, gauze etc) per bed, daily. Now, that number has gone up to between 2.5kg to 4kg per bed, daily, according to SMS Water Grace BMW Private Limited,
one of the two CBWTFS in Delhi. A large Covid facility can generate 1800 to 2200 kg of biomedical waste per day.
Now multiply this with the number of Covid-19 hospitals in the country: 2,900. Add to it the biomedical waste generated from 20,700 quarantine centres, 1,540 sample collection centres and 260 laboratories dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, and the biomedical waste collected by municipalities (Delhi alone has 12,000 home isolation facilities) and one gets a sense of the sheer volume of the problem.
Much of this is plastic – N-95 masks are made up of polyisoprene (natural rubber) and polypropylene (thermoplastic); face shields are all plastic.
The CPCB guidelines also include red bag waste for contaminated plastic, which are meant to be recycle. Yet, the Capital’s total incineration capacity is 37 tonnes per day and it is already utilising approximately 70% to 75% of that. “The amount of waste generated from the hospital has certainly gone up with so many disposable items now,” said Dr DK Sharma, medical superintendent of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
“We are staring at a big crisis in the coming days if waste is not segregated properly and the load on incineration is not reduced,” said Vikas Gehlot, spokesperson for Biotic Waste Management, one of Delhi’s CBWTFS.
Increasing the number of such treatment facilities doesn’t seem to be a viable solution, a senior official told HT. “The capacity of incinerators is a problem, especially when the projection says that the active cases could go up to as many as 50,000 cases. But it still doesn’t make sense to invest in these machines because we do not know if this infection is episodic or will it be recurring. What do you do with these machines once cases start decreasing?” a senior official from the Delhi health department said, on condition of anonymity.