Small communities in the primeval societies used to bury solid waste just outside their settlement, discharge aqueous waste into the local waterbodies and release gaseous pollutants into the atmosphere. The increase in community  size, necessitated a more organised form of waste management to minimize the environmental impacts as the quantity of pollutants exceeded the system’s threshold. The stabilization of health issues at personal levels gave impetus to the community health issues. The earliest records show that the city of Mahenjo-Daro (Indus Valley) had organised solid waste management processes, Crete had trunk sewer systems by 2000 BC and the burning of soft coal in kilns in 1285 BC was banned to mitigate air pollution. Health and safety issues have been focus of waste management since early years (Ramachandra, 2011).  The general public is more concerned with the effects that waste has on the environment while for the waste managers and planners the cost of collection, processing and disposal gains importance with the growing problem. Thus different waste management practices gained utmost importance as human activities exceeded the assimilative capacity of the biosphere (Ramachandra, 2006). The Government of India introduced statutory waste minimisation, treatment and environmentally sound management to address the earth’s dwindling resources and the growing mountains of waste (The Solid Waste Management Rule 2016, Government of India).

Over the last few decades, India is finding hardships in managing the wastes; this is due to the changing life styles of people and their negligence, urbanization and the improper planning of government in these activities. The physical and chemical composition of Indian city refuse shows that 80% of it is compostable and ideal for  biogas generation, moisture content of 50-55% and carbon-nitrogen ratio of 25-40:1. The quantum of wastes being generated in India is increasing due to increase in population and it is now nearly 300-480 g/day. All the major cities of India is generating about 3500 tonnes of wastes per day on an average. The composition of the waste is 60-70% of it is organic matter and the recyclables ranges from 9.56% to 17.18%. Plastics had a quantum jump from 0.69-3.69% which is 500% increase in the past years which is hazardous for human environment and for ecology (Ramachandra and Shruthi, 2007). The waste disposal methods used in India is 90% of them are dumped in low-lying areas  outside city/town limits, which has no provision for treatment and leachate collection which is a  huge disadvantage to the environment and damages the ecology severely by heavy metals entering underground water and landfill gas entering atmosphere etc. (Ramachandra and Shruthi, 2007; Shwetamala et al., 2014; Chanakya et al., 2015). Recycling is highly organised in India compared to other developed nations. 40-80% of plastics get recycled. However due to lack of government policies, incentives, subsidies, regulations, standards, et.c, the technology and quality of manufactured goods are still far behind its western counterparts. Nevertheless recycling has become a profit-making venture, though informal in nature. Health impacts are severe in India in the recent years due to negligence of municipal workers and absence of standards and norms for handling municipal wastes. Respiratory ailments, gastro-intestinal ailments, skin lesions, eye problems are found by a survey (Ramachandra et al., 2013). Environmental impacts include decrease in air quality, water quality, psychological stress, cancer incidence for those living near incinerators and land disposal facilities. Increases diseases due to mosquito breeding and due to chemical reactions of these waste,  mutations are also happening in the bacteria which are also resulting in new kinds of diseases (Ramachandra et al., 2014). As human needs and activities overload the assimilative capacity of the biosphere, the debate on the sustainable waste management has become paramount. Advances in the environmental measurement techniques have shown that the current demand on the earth’s resources is not sustainable and needs addressing immediately (Ramachandra, 2011; Ramachandra and Saira, 2003).  Solid waste management has evolved greatly since its early days and it now considers an interrelated series of options aiming at waste source reduction, recycling, treatment and final disposal.

A system analysis approach has become necessary while considering many options available and a system model is desirable because of the interactions between many factors within a waste management system. In a system approach the problems are multidimensional and multidisciplinary and so the solutions must reflect this complexity. The multidimensional aspect includes the economic and environmental sectors. A systems approach requires a long-term perspective, and analysis may need to extend across geo-political borders (Ramachandra, 2006). Thus, systems analysis plays an important role for regionalization assessment of integrated solid waste management systems, providing the decision makers with breakthrough insights and risk-informed strategies.

Appropriate waste management policy should be on the principles of sustainable development, according to which society’s refuse should not be regarded simply as something to eliminate but rather as a potential resource. Solid waste management facilities are crucial for environmental management and public health in urban regions. Due to the waste management hierarchy, one of the greatest challenges that organizations face today is to figure out how to diversify the treatment options, increase the reliability of infrastructure systems, and leverage the redistribution of waste streams among incineration, compost, recycling, and other facilities to their competitive advantage region wide. Techniques for solving regional waste problems inevitably have a large number of possible solutions due to variable population densities, incomes, multiple (actual and potential) locations for waste management infrastructure, protected landscape areas and high value ecological sites. This requires creation of an integrated waste management plan that makes full use of all available technologies. This would entail an increase in material recycling and energy recovery, and landfill disposal option only for inert materials and residues from recovery and recycling as shown in Figure 1. In this context, SWM 2016 (Government of India) stipulate the reduction of the present levels of waste generation and the increase in energy and material recovery, which represent two of the most important future requirements for environmentally-sound waste management practices. Landfill is generally recognized as the final destination of the refuse that cannot be further segregated or recovered in any other way.

Figure 1: Material flow in the municipal solid waste management system

Despite the development of strategic planning models, the descriptions of source separation strategies of recyclables are usually insufficient to enable calculation of the amounts of materials separately collected. The amount of a material separately collected in an area depends on two factors: (i) the coverage of a collection system applied and (ii) the separation activity of waste producers, consisting of participation rate and separation efficiency. The coverage of a collection system is defined as the ratio of (a) the amount of a material produced in those properties where separate collection is available and (b) the amount of the material in question produced in all properties of the area. Participation rate is defined as the share of people providing sorted material to bins in those places where this option is available. Separation efficiency is defined as the share of a material that is correctly separated by those participating in separation. In several strategic planning models, all of these factors have been ignored and the amounts of materials separated at the source are treated as input data. Solid waste management is particularly difficult and costly today due to the increasing volumes of waste and the need to control potential serious environmental and health effects of disposal. National planning for solid waste management is necessary for the development and implementation of a very long-term and reliable action. The current situation, which gives rise to the indiscriminate dumping of wastes, has a serious impact on air, land and water pollution and causes a dramatic increase in health hazards in the urban environment. In many cities non-governmental and community-based organisations (NGOs and CBOs) have started developing neighbourhood waste collection services as well as initiating composting and recycling activities. These moves are backed up by municipal solid waste management and handling rules (The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, GOI,  2016). Among other requirements, this rule demand source segregation and waste recovery, the local authorities in charge of municipal bodies have a statutory obligation to collect and dispose of household waste. Efficient planning for municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems requires accounting for the complete set of environmental effects and costs associated with the entire life cycle of the waste. Life cycle assessment (LCA)  helps to evaluate the environmental burden associated with a product, process or activity and to consider opportunities that can effect environmental improvements. The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), a worldwide federation of national standards bodies, has standardised the framework on LCA. The main barriers include lack of awareness of the importance of using the life cycle concept, the quality of the data and a general lack of understanding of how to conduct the  LCA correctly and interpret the results. The study indicated that integrated waste management would  ultimately be the most efficient approach in terms of both economics and environment benefits (Ramachandra 2006; Ramachandra and Shruthi, 2007).