Emission from open burning of municipal solid waste in India

ABSTRACT

Open burning of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is a potential non-point source of emission, which causes greater concern especially in developing countries such as India. Lack of awareness about environmental impact of open burning, and ignorance of the fact, i.e. ‘Open burning is a source of emission of carcinogenic substances’ are major hindrances towards an appropriate municipal solid waste management system in India. The paper highlights the open burning of MSW practices in India, and the current and projected emission of 10 major pollutants (dioxin, furans, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and 1-hexene) emitted due to the open burning of MSW. Waste to Energy potential of MSW was also estimated adopting effective biological and thermal techniques. Statistical techniques were applied to analyse the data and current and projected emission of various pollutants were estimated. Data pertaining to population, MSW generation and its collection efficiency were compiled for 29 States and 7 Union Territories. Thereafter, emission of 10 pollutants was measured following methodology prescribed in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guideline for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, 2006. The study revealed that people living in Metropolitan cities are more affected by emissions from open burning.

KEYWORDS:

• Open burning
• municipal solid waste
• dioxin
• furans
• carcinogenic

Acknowledgements

The first author is thankful to Department of Biotechnology, Delhi for providing financial support vide sanction order no. DBT/CTEP/02/201500196 for travel to Hong Kong for Oral presentation on ‘Open burning of municipal solid waste’ in International Conference on Solid Wastes 2015, Hong Kong (ICSWHK2015).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The first author is thankful to Department of Biotechnology, Delhi for providing financial support vide sanction order no. DBT/CTEP/02/201500196 for travel to Hong Kong for Oral presentation on ‘Open burning of municipal solid waste’ in International Conference on Solid Wastes 2015, Hong Kong (ICSWHK2015), Sino-Forest Applied Research Centre for Pearl River Delta Environment (ARCPE), and Hong Kong Baptist University.