Enablers of sustainable municipal solid waste management system in India

The present study moves beyond the traditional focus of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) of collection and disposal to sustainable MSWM that takes a systems view and addresses issues related to waste prevention, waste reduction, and waste segregation. The empirical study was conducted in large cities in North India that have a very high rate of solid waste generation. The study was conducted in two stages - in the first stage, an empirical study with two major stakeholders, the elected and government officials was conducted. In the second stage, interpretive structural modelling (ISM) is applied to evolve a hierarchy-based relationship among the enablers of sustainable MSWM. According to the results of empirical study, there are disagreements on several issues considered as strategic to implement a sustainable municipal solid waste management. Thus, there is a need to bring all the stakeholders agree on common policy issues of sustainable MSWM. Further, the ISM model shows that there exists a group of variables having a high driving power and low dependence requiring maximum attention and are of strategic importance.