CSE's Clean City Awards conferred on three Indian cities

Chennai: While all cities in Tamil Nadu are lagging far behind, Alappuzha in neighbouing Kerala and Mysuru in Karnataka have emerged as India's cleanest cities along with Goa capital Panaji.

The rating was done by New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) based on each city's municipal waste management capabilities. The three cities will be awarded CSE's Clean City award by Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu at a function to be held here on Tuesday. Venkaiah will also officially release CSE's latest report on solid waste management in Indian cities, titled “Not in my backyard”.

“This book started as a survey-we wanted to simply know which city is India's cleanest. We knew that once we found out the cleanest city, we would also find out what makes it so. This would give us the answers for future policy,” said Sunita Narain, director general, CSE.

''Apart from several new and exciting findings, what also became clear was the imperative need for policy changes in garbage management. CSE had assumed that this was a much-researched area, which however, was not the case,” she said.

The last survey to understand quantity and composition was done over a decade ago. The methodology used to calculate waste generated is to simply extrapolate an assumed quantity estimate with the population, she said.

“There is however no real on-ground data available. In addition, not much information is available on the composition of waste in terms of organic, bio-degradable, or plastic, or the quantum. In essence, what had started as a survey was turning out into a gap analysis,'' she added.

According to Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) estimates, over 90 per cent of Indian cities with a functional collection system dispose of their waste in landfills. These landfills are not made according to stipulated sanitary standards, Narain said.

In 2008, CPCB's monitoring of cities found that 24 out of 59 cities were making use of landfills, covering 1,900 hectares of land. Another 17 planned to create landfills. Since land was becoming scarce within city limits, municipalities were looking for “regional sites” to dump their waste, she said.