Survey Report Regarding Waste Management in India

Hello friends,

A few days back our team conducted a survey regarding “Waste Management in India” where we proposed a method of separation of waste (into three categories i.e. recyclable, non-recyclable and food waste) before throwing it out of house or commercial outlets. This method was proposed in order to make it more convenient for recycling the waste. The survey results were quite interesting and I would strongly recommend you to read the report compiled by our team.

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the survey. Based on this survey, we presented our idea in a contest jointly organized by “Smile-Gate and Yonsei University KLI”. Our presentation won the Popularity Award as it was liked by most of the audience. We were also able to bag one more award for best “Korean Language Skill”.

Now we have decided to take a step ahead in this direction and not limit this idea just to bag some medals in a competition. We want to take this idea to the Ministry of Urban Development of India. Our motive will be to bind this Waste Separation Practice with the “Swachh Bharat Mission” of Indian government. Therefore, we will run an online petition in a couple of days after proposing this plan to the ministry of urban development. We will be proposing some policies and examples for better implementation of this program. I will look forward to have your cooperation for the development and betterment of India. Our target would be to get the petition signed by more than 50 thousand people from all across India.

Now let us have a look at the survey results in the report below.

We began our survey by asking our participants to rate the level of cleanliness in India on a scale of 5, where 5 is excellent.

54.4% of the people gave a rating of 2 out of 5 and 31.1% of the people gave a rating of 3 out of 5. This dissatisfaction is not surprising but it obviously puts forth a strong signal that it is high time to do something substantial in this direction.

We were overwhelmed to see the suggestions from people. After carefully reading each of the suggestions and other parts of the survey, our team summarized the results in 3 key words as follows:

1. Policies: 57.3% of the participants believe that this waste separation technique can be put into practice if government implements proper policies. The point was clear that we lack proper policies for implementation of any such campaign. Suggestions included installation of dustbins for different categories of waste, distribution of free polythene bags for separating waste, encouraging and binding people through a method of fine and reward, increasing the budget, 23% of people were in favor of introducing new tax or cess for this purpose, as we already know that Swachh Bharat cess of 0.5% has already been implemented on every taxable service under “Swachh Bharat campaign” or Clean India Campaign. This is expected to bring substantial change in the near future.

2. Awareness drive: Majority of our population is not aware of the types of waste i.e. recyclable and non-recyclable.

77.7% of the participants also think that for such an initiative we need to adopt an extensive awareness drive program. Advertisements through electronic and print media would play a great role in spreading awareness. Visuals like pamphlets, banners and stickers can be helpful to educate those who do not have access to media and television. Some remarkable suggestions included special budget for advertisements, and training program for the “Safai Karmcharis” (Sanitation workers).

3. Contribution at individual level: Many of the participants in our survey believe that any remarkable change cannot be brought into existence until there is a sense of individual contribution, irrespective of whatever the government does. After discussion over this point, our team came to the conclusion that individual contribution can be ensured only when there are proper policies and well-designed system in existence that could bind people to follow the rules and regulations.

We also asked people about their opinion regarding Swachh Bharat Mission and its impact on the cleanliness of Country. 61.2% of the participants "agreed to some extent" that it can bring "some changes". However 19.4% were not able to decide its implications and only 12.6% of the people strongly agreed that Swachh Bharat Mission can indeed bring substantial changes. This lack of confidence in this "mega-budget mission", according to us, is probably due to lack of policies that could bind people at individual level to follow cleanliness and hygienic practices.

The last question we asked was how much time will it take for people to be accustomed with the waste separation practice. We got a mixed response to this question. However, we summed up the responses and found that 48.6% of the people think that it can be achieved in less than 3 years. To our surprise, there were 1.9% of the people who think that it is not possible and 17.5% believe that it will take more than 5 years to take real shape.

Our team concludes that our young population is already charged enough to follow campaigns like Swachh Bharat Mission, now they just need to be guided in a correct direction and assigned proper task in order to ensure contribution at individual level, rather than giving them vague message like “keep the city clean”.

We are of the opinion that the waste separation practice can easily be implemented within a time period of 2 years with the help of proper policies. At first it can be started at those 20 cities which are proposed to be developed as smart cities in the first round by Indian government and then it can be gradually implemented in other cities and villages. We will run an online petition with a detailed plan very shortly.

Thank you once again.