title: The role of non-governmental organizations in residential solid waste management: a case study of Puducherry, a coastal city of India.
abstract: Poorly planned and uncontrolled urbanization in India has caused a variety of negative, often irreversible, environmental impacts. The impacts appear to be unavoidable and not easily mitigable due to the mounting public health problems caused by non-segregation of solid wastes at source and their subsequent improper management. Recently in India, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other civil society organizations have increasingly started to get involved in improving waste management services. Municipal solid waste management being a governmental function, the contribution of NGOs in this field has not been well documented. This study highlights the activities and services of Shuddham, an NGO functioning in the town of Puducherry within the Union Territory of Puducherry in South India. The NGO program promoted much needed awareness and education, encouraged source separation, enhanced door-to-door collection, utilized wastes as raw materials and generated more job opportunities. Even though source separation prior to door-to-door collection is a relatively new concept, a significant percentage of residents (39%) in the study area participated fully, while a further 48% participated in the collection service. The average amount of municipal solid waste generated by residential units in the Raj Bhavan ward was 8582 kg/month of which 47% was recovered through active recycling and composting practices. The study describes the features and performance of NGO-mediated solid waste management, and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats of this system to see whether this model can sustainably replace the low-performance conventional solid waste management in practice in the town of Puducherry. The experiences from this case study are expected to provide broad guidelines to better understand the role of NGOs and their contributions towards sustainable waste management practices in urban areas.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology & Environmental Sciences, Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India.
authors.forename: Ramamoorthy
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rajamanikam
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology & Environmental Sciences, Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India.
authors.forename: Gopalsamy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Poyyamoli
authors.affiliation: Solid and Hazardous Waste Management Division, CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur, India s_kumar@neeri.res.in.
authors.forename: Sunil
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology & Environmental Sciences, Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India.
authors.forename: Lekshmi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: R
mesh_terms: D002947:Cities; D004651:Employment; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D009938:Organizations; D012037:Refuse Disposal / Q000379:methods*; D062611:Solid Waste / Q000032:analysis; D018505:Waste Management / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D062611:Solid Waste
keywords: Non-governmental organization; SWOT; participation rate; residential solid waste management; resource recovery; source separation