Community-based Solid Waste Management

Rajamanikam

Rajamanikam is a final year student at Pondicherry University’s Department of Ecology and Environmental Science doing his thesis on community-based solid waste management. He is here at Shuddham for three months, from December to February, to conduct his field work. At the end of three months, Rajamani will have studied the current system of solid waste management handled by the Pondicherry municipality and compared it with the zero-waste model developed by Shuddham.

Current system:

Rajamani will examine the size of the municipal dumps and survey the area surrounding the dumps, including the health of the tribal population alloted space in the area and ground water quality.

Shuddham system:

In the area currently covered by Shuddham, Rajamani is conducting a household survey of the 482 homes in the 15 streets north of the Park in the Raj Bhavan ward of Pondicherry. Survey questions include:

• How many people in the home
• How much waste they household generates a day
• Whether they are segregating the waste
  • If so, do they know why they are segregating?
  • If not, they are given an education on segregation.

Initial survey results indicate that 50% of the households are currently segregating. A return visit indicates that 30% of the non-segregating households are now segregating following the education by Rajamani.

Rajamani will also study the volume of recyclables collected, by type (e.g. how much of the dry waste is paper, polyethylene bags, medical waste, etc.) and assess an economic value to the waste-turned-resource.

Rajamani’s household survey will be invaluable for Shuddham, as they strive to make all households in their service area compliant.