Introduction
From the mid-twentieth century, the world population has grown three times larger, from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to approximately 8.0 billion in 2022. In the next 30 years, the world population is expected to increase by 2 billion people (United Nations, 2023). To accommodate the increasing population, there is a need to develop modern and sustainable cities. One of the outcomes of the continuous increase in human population is the production of waste. Hence, that is why Sustainable Cities and Communities SDG#11 mission is to make cities inclusive, safe resilient, and sustainable, which calls for new and intelligent urban planning that develops affordable, safe, and resilient cities with good living conditions (Vaidya & Chatterji, 2020). This is different from what is happening to Mumbai, India where thousands of tonnes of waste remained unattended in the metropolis each year. Therefore, this essay extensively examines Mumbai, India’s plastic waste management issue.
Problem Identification
According to Tembhekar (2023), Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) data for 2022 shows that the city generates around 6400 tonnes of solid waste daily, of which 3.2% is plastic. One of the main issues with waste in Mumbai is the low recycling rate. In 2021, only 47000 tonnes of dry waste, that included 12402 tonnes of plastic was recycled. It implies that approximately half of the Mumbai plastic waste was disposed of in landfills, buried under soil, or swept to water bodies.
Figure 1: 47 000 of dry waste in 2021
Source: (Tembhekar, 2023)
2.1 Description and Justification of the Issue Using Ingenuity Process
Affected
Arora-Desai (2022) notes that Mumbai, in the 496 cities, poses severe risk of plastic pollution from landfills. The problem is exacerbated by environmental factors such as rain, floods, and wind, making Mumbai’s municipal waste dumbs leaky. The city landfills are close to the sea, as shown in Figure 2, which increases the probability of polluting compared to waste dump inland. The ways through which plastics from the landfills enter the environment include flooding, blowing, and precipitation. One group affected by plastic waste in Mumbai is fisher communities along the Mumbai beaches that find it inaccessible to fishing (Arora-Desai, 2022). Mumbai residents. For example, following heavy rains in 2005, it led to the death of over 1000 people in Mumbai, and solid waste such as plastics blocking the drainage contributed. Also, the transportation sector is affected where mass transit systems and private cars push for space on narrow roads.
Figure 2: Fishers losing access to fishing
b. Where the Problem Occurs
The problem of plastic pollution in Mumbai occurs mainly in cities. Hence, this makes the flood peaks in the cities about 2 to 8 times higher than in rural areas. Clogging of the drainage systems coupled with heavy rainfalls in vulnerable areas causes disasters. Chatterjee and Fernandes (2019) note that 80 to 110 tonnes of plastic waste are dumped into water channels daily.
c. Consequences
A low recycling of the plastic waste in Mumbai means that most of them end up in the water drainage or under the soil. Those that clogged the drain led to floods when the city experienced heavy rains, as witnessed in 2005, which led to the death of over 1000 (Tyagi, 2020). Also, there has been an issue where fishers along the beach need help accessing fishing points.
D. Why does the Problem exist
There are two main reasons why the problem exists. The first reason is that there is low recycling of the waste in Mumbai city, a factor that has been linked to lack of advanced infrastructure to deal with the issue of plastic waste (Ravago India. (2023). There is a mismatch between the quantity of the plastic waste produced and the available infrastructure to recycle that waste. Even though the government promotes recycling, but recycling is not easy. A second reason for the plastic pollution in Mumbai is due to the attitude of the negligence of Mumbai residents. Chatterjee, and Fernandes, S (2019) claim that Mumbai residents that leave near drains dumb plastics into natural water after using them only once.
2.2 Impact of the Sustainable Goal Chosen for the Challenge
According to the UN (2023), SDG11’s goal is to ensure access to affordable, safe, and accessible urban environments. However, at the moment, Mumbai city is not safe due to the plastic pollution that has seen to negatively affect the wellbeing of the city residents. UN (2023) note that high concentration of people in cities, economic activities, infrastructures, and housing are vulnerable to natural disasters effects. Hence, there is need to develop urban resilience to evade social, human and economic losses like those witnessed in Mumbai city in 2005. As it stands, Mumbai is not a resource efficient city. UN (2023) asserts that a resource-efficient city combines greater innovation and productivity with reduced costs and declined environmental effects but at the same time offering enhanced opportunities for residents and sustainable lifestyles. Hence, by observing SDG#11, Mumbai city can deal with the plastic pollution issue.
3 Analysis of the Entrepreneurial Solution
3.1 Innovative and SDG approach to Solution
The solution to the plastic pollution issue facing Mumbai city is to increase recycling. Even though there have been challenges with recycling, increasing recycling has been shown to produce positive results, and this is what the three levels of government need to invest in. One of the reasons for the prevalent issue of plastic pollution is inadequate infrastructure to match the volume of the waste that is produced. Hence, this calls for the three levels of government to invest more in plastic recycling infrastructure. One of the innovative ways is to acquire technologies such as plastic fischer that was founded by three friends, and it is based on low cost and low technology. It is a floating barrage that captures plastic waste floating down the stream (Torkington, 2022). As seen plastic issue in Mumbai is severe, and it calls for concerted efforts from different players.
Increasing the recycling happening in the city that can be attained by developing more recycling facilities and allowing people to easily recycle their plastic waste. According to SDG#11, as people increase in the cities, there is a need to come up with new urban plans to ensure that it matches the growth in the population to ensure sustainability (Sinha et al., 2020). However, this is not the case in Mumbai city, which seems to be stagnated with the basic infrastructure to recycle plastic waste despite the continuous growth of the population in the city. Hence, it is the time that the three levels of government allocate more resources to develop adavanced infrastructure that has a capacity to recycle more plastic to avoid such plastic ending up in the water source of left unrecycled and disposed to environment.
3.2 Application of the Entreprenieual Method DIFA to Solution
demand for the new solution
Considering the negative consequences associated with plastic waste in Mumbai city, the demand for a new solution is high. Plastic waste issue has increased in Mumbai city to a point where the government has banned the use of plastic bags in the city. However, the government move has not been productive as people continue to use plastic bags and dispose them carelessly. Approximately 9,000 tonnes of plastic waste is generated in Mumbai city daily (Sharma & Chandel, 2021). However, the city infrastructure lacks the capacity to handle this volume of waste, hence, resulting in environmental pollution. When these plastic waste clog sewers and drains, it causes floods in the monsoon season.
innovativeness of the new solution
Because the present infrastructure can only handle a section of the plastics waste that Mumbai city produce daily, developing advanced infrastructure will allow more plastic waste to be recycled. There is a need for the upgrade of the existing infrastructure that deals with plastic waste management. This calls for the need to invest more in the recycling infrastructure or adopt the approach that the US uses (Law et al., 2020). The US lacks the capacity to recycle millions of tonnes of plastic waste it generates; hence, exported to other countries to be treated or recycled.
feasibility of the new solution
The new solution is feasible because experts have advised that Mumbai can increase recycling by segregating more waste at the source (Tembhekar, 2023). From 2017-18 to 2021-22, waste segregation at the source rose from 65% to 81% as a result of development of 55 dry waste segregation points. It has been established that plastic that is collected through the formal channel in the city does not find itself back to the environment. Of 1000 dry waste consisting of plastic and paper, is segregated daily at Kanjurmarg landfill, and 500 of clean waste is recycled and the remaining is used in factories and boilers. Therefore, this show that with more segregation centers, it will increase volume of plastic recycled.
Attractiveness of the new solution
Due to the severity of the plastic waste issue in Mumbai city and the negative consequences it is causing to the environment and to the people, developing advanced infrastructure to deal with the issue is an attractive solution. Therefore, weighing on the negative consequences, it will be attractive for informal sectors and governments to invest more in infrastructures that recycle plastic waste.
Justification of the Entrepreneurial Proposal
Several possible solutions to the plastic waste in Mumbai city exist, but investing more in the advanced infrastructure, particularly developing of more segregations centers, will significantly help Mumbai deal with the severe issue of plastic waste. Gurlhosur, G. (2017) notes that a waste management center at Bandra is leading in collection of dry waste in Mumbai. The center collects 25 metric tons of dry waste daily, segregated and transported from the center. BMC gave the Bandra centre to an NGO that employed 112 employees. The center separates plastic waste into different categories, and the waste is sent to various recycling units in different parts of the country. The recycled waste is the raw material for carpets, bottles, and glass products.
From the DIFA section, it was seen that waste segregation at the source rose from 65% to 81% as a result of the development of 55 dry waste segregation points, and the waste that was collected in the formal channel does not find itself in the environment again. This implies that with more segregation centers constructed, the recycling of the plastic waste increases. Given the large volumes of the plastics waste that are produced on daily basis, there is a need to partner more with informal sectors (Kravchenko, 2019). If the Bandra centre is having the impact it is having, and it is one center, it implies that if more centers are set, and the local, state and central government channel resources in these centers, the levels of plastic waste in Mumbai city will be managed better.
One of the ways through which the government improves the service delivery to people is through a public-private partnerships that sees the government agency collaborating with the private sector to develop projects in society. For example, in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) gave Bandra centre to an NGO. Bandra centre leads in the collection of the waste, and BMC can work with other private companies or interested parties to manage plastic waste. The overall goal is to act sustainably to protect the environment and create a safe environment to live in. Therefore, the issue of waste management becomes of interest to both the formal and informal players, who should collaborate to improve the outcomes.
Sodiq et al (2019) note that developing sustainable cities should be interst of every nation as it is projected that by 2050, over 60% of the world population, will live in the cities. Hence, due to this high, it is important for the urban planners to implement sustainable actions and develop cities supporting sustainable infrastructure. Currently, literature has established that infrastructure at Mumbai city that deals with waste management is not sustainable because the waste that is generated exceeds the capacity of the present infrastructure to handle it. The three levels of government have come up with policies but seem not to yield the desired results. The government banned the use of plastic, but people still use and dispose of it carelessly. Therefore, hence, government need to work with private players and invest more in advanced infrastructure to realize a sustainable Mumbai city.
Conclusion and Recommendation
Mumbai city faces the issue of plastic waste. The plastic produced in the city has been increased and the available infrastructure lacks the capacity to handle that waste. Hence, a fraction of the plastic waste is recycled, and the remaining portion finds itself in the environment, and some end up in the water sources. This has caused negative consequences such as clogging the drains and resulting to floods in monsoon season. Also, fishers have challenges in their fishing activities due to plastic waste that are disposed along Mumbai beaches. Even though the government has come up with solutions such as banning the use of plastics, this move has not successes. There exist many solution but this text recommends development of advanced infrastructure in Mumbai city that will enable handling of more plastic waste to match the produced quantity. Investments made in developing more infrastructure that deals with plastic waste management have shown positive results, and that is why this text recommends more investment in the infrastructure, and this can entail public-private partnership.
References
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