Green body finds faults in govt’s clean city survey

New Delhi, May 6: The Centre’s process of selecting clean cities needed to be changed, a green body said on Saturday, claiming that the three toppers in its latest cleanliness survey had adopted environmentally “unsustainable” waste management practices.

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said there was an “urgent need” to change the methodology of the “Swachchh Survekshan” to encourage sustainable practices such as segregation of waste at source and recycle-andreuse. It asserted that the top three cities as per Swachchh Survekshan 2017 — Indore, Bhopal and Vishakhapatnam — were focusing on collecting unsegregated waste and transporting it to landfills

CSE claimed that the three toppers in its latest cleanliness survey had adopted environmentally ‘unsustainable’ waste management practices

with a minimal amount of waste being processed.

Indore in Madhya Pradesh was declared the cleanest city by the survey. Bhopal, also in MP, occupied the second slot among 434 cities, followed by Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Surat in Gujarat.

“An analysis of the results of Swachchh Survekshan, shows that the top three cities — Indore, Bhopal and Vishakhapatnam — have adopted environmentally unsustainable practices for waste management.

“The cities are focusing on collecting unsegregated waste and transporting it to landfills, with a very minimal quantum of waste being processed. All three cities are dumping unsegregated waste. These cities are, therefore, not meeting the requirements of the Municipal Solid Waste Rules, 2016,” the CSE said.

It added that the MSW rules clearly stated that the waste needed to be segregated into three categories at the household level — wet, dry and domestic hazardous waste. Further, it said the rules stipulated that the waste-to-energy plants should not burn mixed waste and should dump the disposal at landfills as the “least preferred option”.