Over 18 Crore Tons Of Municipal Legacy Waste To Be Remediated By 2026

In order to get rid of old dumpyards, cities and towns have the massive task of completing the remediation of around 18.2 crore tonnes of legacy municipal waste in the next four years.

According to the data prepared by the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry, about 4.3 crore tonnes of such waste out of the total 24.7 crore tonnes has been remediated by the state and city government agencies.

Maharashtra and Telangana have remediated around 2.9 crore tonnes of the legacy waste, which accounts for nearly 67 per cent of such waste treated so far across urban areas in the country.

Even after that among all the states and UTs, Maharashtra has a maximum of nearly 4.2 crore tonnes of such legacy waste at dumpsites followed by Delhi with around 2.4 crore tonnes of waste at three sites.

Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Gujarat have more than one crore tonnes of such waste each, the data show.

The Ministry maintains that the data on legacy waste was provided by the urban entities of state governments when the centre rolled out the Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 in October 2021, in which a major component was to get rid of the legacy waste by 2026.

The intention behind putting the data online is to create more awareness among the states and cities to take proactive steps. Several states have set the goal to complete the remediation of such waste in 2024.

So far this exercise has resulted in freeing up around 6,900 acres of urban land, according to the Ministry .

The Ministry maintains that till now more than 1,000 remediation proposals have been approved by the centre and their target is to approve 80 per cent of the projects by March 2023. It usually takes around two years to complete such projects.