Sustainable waste management is the need of the hour: Housing Minister

Solid Waste Management

waste managementCalling sustainable waste management as the need of the hour,  Minister of state (I/C) for Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Puri said that waste management “involves managing waste in an environmentally sound, socially satisfactory and techno-economically viable manner. The waste management hierarchy demands firstly, avoiding generation of waste, followed by reducing, reusing, recycling, recovering, treating and disposing whatever wastes produced. The fundamental objective should be to maximize re-use and recycling so that minimum land space is occupied for disposal and at the same time, natural resources and energy are saved.”

He was speaking after the inauguration of  the National workshop on “processing and use of construction & demolition waste on deconstruction and in-situ processing for ecology and economics.

Also present on the occasion were Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Dr. Shailesh Kumar Agrawal, Executive Director, BMTPC.

“In order to meet requirements of urban transformation and flagship programmes of our Government as regards housing and infrastructure, it is known fact that we can not continue to make use of conventional building materials which continue to depend on finite natural resources mainly drawing upon the carrying capacity of the eco system and often causes irreparable environmental damages. It is being increasingly recognized that raw materials from natural resources are being used at a faster rate than they are being replenished or alternatives being found. The challenge posed by the emerging trends of higher consumption levels has to be met within the concept of sustainable development, of which gainful utilisation of waste is one of the important components”, he added.

Major municipalities like Surat, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Rajkot are also in the process of waste processing plants, the Minister informed.