The Environment Ministry will notify next week a set of "completely revamped" waste management rules including those for plastic and bio-medical refuse.
The Ministry is also set to introduce a new programme in schools where students will be motivated to segregate waste and put them into seperate bins so that it can be recycled, and the money generated from it be put to environment-friendly initatives.
At the same time, the Environment Ministry has also requested the Science and Technology Department to create a seperate cell to "analyse, assess and rate" technologies promoting waste-to-energy conversion for various cities.
"We revamped the solid waste management rules. The draft was published. Solid waste, construction and demolition waste, e-waste, plastic waste, hazardous waste and bio-medical waste, all six waste management rules have been revamped completely.
"They will be notified from next week. Every week there will be a new rule coming into force," Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said during a conference on waste-to-energy conversion.
Noting that despite waste-to-energy being talked about, and experimented with at various levels, there is not a single city in the country which is totally happy with the solution as the lack of expertise in corporations leads to reforms being 'contractor-driven" rather than drivemn by the merit of technology.
"We have taken an important decision. We have requested the Department of Science and Technology to establish a separate cell with a network of all scientific establishments.
"They will verify the technology, assess it and then rate the technology and advise whether this technology is useful. If a city goes to them with technological options (for waste to energy creation), that will be assessed and rated," he said.
Javadekar said that waste generators are responsible for waste generated by them and responsibility will have to be fixed on them.
Stressing that the Modi government is the first to address the issue of cleanliness of India, Javadekar said it was "unfortunate" that even after 68 years of independence, 86 per cent of the sewage goes untreated into water bodies.
Javadekar said the country has the capacity to treat only
30 per cent of sewage but only half of the mechanism is working.
He said that his Ministry is introducing a new programme in schools as students are the "agents of change" of 'Clean India' programme.
"We are giving four bins to each school - for plastic, paper, tin and glass waste. We will put these four bins in the schools. Students will be motivated to bring such waste, at least once in a week and drop them into these dustbins.
"Things will go to the recycler and whatever money is generated would be used for environment-friendly new initiatives in the school itself," Javadekar said.
Noting that the recycler, ragpicker and the informal sector becomes a very important aspect of waste management, Javadekar said his ministry will recognise them and present all the three with awards.
He said the new rules will provide for storage facilities, while the compost generated would be marketed. The rules would have stringent environmental norms for incineration, and the monitoring mechanism for them will be strengthened.
The new rules would aim at having no landfills or minimum waste going to landfills. The rules also aim at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and carbon footprint.
