2 Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) audit |
Auditing has become an increasingly popular tool to assess the environmental policies, quality of implementation, compliance with national law and regulation, etc. Auditing has also been widely used in India, especially in industries. The most popular audits that are carried out in India are energy audits (TERI, 2002) followed by environmental management systems audits of which a waste minimisation audit is an integral part (Mannan, 2002). Audits on MSWM in India are however, very rare. In western countries however, audits on urban waste management have increasingly been carried out with respect to performance, compliance, risk, monitoring, existence of waste policy, quality of implementation, etc. Most of the countries have established an auditing institution to carry out the above given assessments.
The Estonian Government had carried out an audit to assess the necessary conditions for successful implementation of the waste policy. Reports and questionnaires were used for the audit and it was observed that the management had serious shortcomings, such as insufficient finance, in comparison to the goal, lack of organisation in the management no national waste management plan and poor monitoring (Linnas, 2001). The Audit Institution of Costa Rica had carried out an audit on SWM in two municipalities, with multiple focus such as pollution prevention system, management system and site audit. The audit was carried out by going through the reports, questionnaire interviews, and site surveys. The various aspects that were looked included compliance with national law and regulation, occupational health and safety, operational risk, pollution prevention and resource management. The audit identified that the ministries were not integrated, resulting in repetition of many working plans. The other findings were, insufficient public awareness programmes, lack of new methodologies and technologies, insufficient financial support and improper monitoring. The management and control of the dump was investigated with regard to national health legislation and technical regulations. Checklists and site surveys were used as tools for this audit. From this audit, it was observed that there was no urban cleanliness plan charted out by the municipal authority, serious violations of the legislations, no proper monitoring by the supervision agency and delayed closure of the dump (INTOSAI, 2002).
This paper presents an audit of the MSWM in Bangalore city. This would help to disseminate the innovative practices that have been adopted for managing municipal solid waste. The study explores the role of various stakeholders in MSWM, the current practices, the role of each entity, the shortcomings of the current practices and issues to be addressed to improve the condition. Auditing of MSWM involved the following objectives:
