Feasibility of Recycling of Municipal Solid Waste in Selected Municipal Corporations of Karnataka, India: An Economic Analysis

Solid waste is the most visible form of environmental problem in many urban regions in recent years. The increased generation of solid waste and diversification in solid waste generation is attributed to many factors such as rising population, changing income, consumption pattern, economic development, urbanization and industrialization. The research was conducted to know the extent of recycling of solid waste and its feasibility. The secondary data on various aspects of solid waste was collected from selected Municipal Corporations (BBMP and HDMC). The primary data was obtained from farmers using recycled solid waste from 30 sample farmers under each municipal corporation. Out of 30 farmers, 15 farmers who were using vermicompost prepared out of solid waste were selected and the remaining 15 were non-users of vermicompost. The results indicated that, nearly 62.00 to 65.00 per cent of solid waste generated was biodegradable which can be easily converted in to vermicompost. Out of the total solid waste generated in Hubballi-Dharwad (400t/day), about 390 t of waste was dumped in two open dumping yards while, only 10 t (2.5 %) was processed through vermicomposting whereas in Bengaluru, about 3,200 t of solid waste per day was landfilled in three sites and only 1,000 t (22.22 %) and 300 t (6.67 %) were processed into vermicompost and bio methanation process, respectively. The recycling of bio-degradable solid waste into vermicompost has high scope and was found to be financially feasible as implied by high IRR (26.12 % in Hubballi-Dharwad to 32.34 % in Bengaluru) and B:C ratio (1.50 and 2.04, respectively) with an investment recovery period of just two years. Therefore, the efforts should be made to convert biodegradable waste in to vermicompost in a larger scale in order to reduce the burden on the landfills and also the use of chemical fertilizers. Further, the segregation of solid waste at source level will make it easy.