Solid Waste Management in Tier II Indian Cities: A Case of Jammu City

Abstract

Indian cities are expanding at an enormous rate to meet the demand for built spaces, which is ever-increasing due to high increase in urban population and lead to development of different residential colonies on outskirts of cities. These residential colonies are mostly deprived of basic infrastructural facilities and have unhygienic and unhealthy living conditions and causes huge environmental degradation. Though, infrastructural facilities of major cities are upgraded under JNNURM but, still there are many aspects of infrastructure which require upgradation and have minimal technological interventions for their provision and management. Solid waste management is one such infrastructure which is essential for providing healthy and clean living environment in cities and presently has minimal use of technology for its collection, transportation, sorting, recycling and disposal, as well as, for monitoring of waste disposal sites. Moreover, available contemporary technologies (like, GIS, remote sensing etc.) are not used efficiently for formulating solid waste management plan. This paper highlights various issues and problems of existing solid waste management process adopted in Jammu city and its possible impacts on environment in and around the city. This paper also highlights the use of technological interventions which can be adopted in the process of solid waste management at various stages, in the specific context of Jammu city