Mumbai’s garbage raises a stink

Marking a jump of close to 14 per cent in a year, waste management in Mumbai drew a whopping sum of Rs 5,548 crore in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s fiscal books of 2025-2026. Despite the heavy expenditure, Mumbai emerged in the list of the top 10 dirtiest cities in the country and occupied 33rd position out of 40 cities across India in waste management, as per the National Swachh Survekshan report released in 2025.

This came in sharp contrast to the neighbouring city Navi Mumbai, ranked the third cleanest city in India. As Mumbai prepares to vote for civic elections on January 15, inadequate cleanliness and sanitation in the city has taken centrestage again with citizens’ manifestoes calling for better waste management. While the Chandivali CHA manifesto has demanded an effective policy to tackle garbage dumps on footpaths, the MNDCF citizen charter has called for enforcement of SWM rules and marshals for waste management in slums. Similar demands for improved sanitation have been made in the Mumbai March manifesto while the Lokhandwala Oshiwara Citizen’s Association (LOCA) manifesto has appealed for eradication of chronic garbage dumps.

How Mumbai deals with its waste On an average, Mumbai generates 6,600 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste per day, of which 72 % is accounted for by organic wet waste, including food material.  With its staff of over 33,700 members, BMC’s solid waste management department collects the solid waste daily and sweeps over 1,750 km of roads every morning.

The collected solid waste is routed to four refuse transfer stations (RTS) in Mahalaxmi, Versova, Kurla and Gorai that serve as waste processing sites for the temporary deposition and aggregation of solid waste. From the RTS, the waste is transferred to the Deonar dumping ground and the Kanjurmarg processing facility.

The Kanjurmarg facility was handed over to the BMC in October 2005 for use as a dumping ground, while the Deonar facility is the oldest landfill in Mumbai established in 1927, after the erstwhile Bombay municipality reclaimed the outlying Deonar area from Thane creek in 1901.

At present, of the 6,600 metric tonnes solid waste generated each day on an average, 6,000 metric tonnes is directed to the Kanjurmarg facility, where upto 5,000 tonnes of waste is processed in a bio-reactor while 1,000 tonnes of waste is treated with compost. The remaining 600 metric tonnes of solid waste is disposed of at the Deonar dumping ground without processing. Meanwhile, nearly 290 tonnes of garbage per day is received at 46 dry waste segregation centres.

Overflowing garbage dump and cleaning activities by municipal authorities in Dadar area this morning.(Express Photo by Akash Patil)

Earlier, the garbage was also dumped at Gorai and Mulund dumping facilities, which were closed in 2007 and 2018 respectively.

During festivities, the quantum of garbage records a surge. In the three days leading upto Diwali in October 2025, for instance, Mumbai produced an additional waste of 3,000 metric tonnes.

Mumbai’s rising tide of construction and redevelopment activity has also spurred the generation of construction and demolition (C&D) waste, with the city generating an average of 8,500 metric tonnes of C&D waste per day. Construction and demolition waste refers to the concrete, dust, building material, debris and rubble generated from construction, repair and demolition of any civil structure. A major quantum of C&D waste is churned out during remodeling of homes, redeveloping projects and infrastructure works.

To cater to the rising pile of C&D waste, the civic body in 2024 commissioned processing plants — one at Dahisar, another at Shilphata — with the capacity to recycle and treat around 600 metric tonnes of C&D waste daily.

Challenges in treating waste Even with a robust mechanism and big budgetary allocation, cleanliness in Mumbai continues to fare poorly — on paper as well as on ground. Mumbai being ranked among the top dirtiest cities of the country is particularly evident during a walk through the city’s slum pockets, which account for 50 per cent of Mumbai’s total population. Sadashiv Shetty, a resident of Sangam Nagar slum near the GTB Nagar monorail station, said that BMC’s garbage collection vehicles never enter the narrow lanes of the slum to collect waste.

“Our slum is huge but the BMC vehicles collect garbage only from the main roads. Since neither the BMC vehicles nor labourers enter the lanes of slums, residents end up dumping the garbage into the nearby drain, which is always overflowing,” said Shetty.

According to senior officials from BMC, the slum pockets churn out waste round-the-clock, making collection and disposal of waste from there a challenging task for the civic force. “While residential societies have a specific timing for waste collection, in slums, waste is produced continuously and dumped in community spots. Even if our staff collects garbage every morning, the same bins are filled to the brim within hours,” said a civic official.

With the daily morning sweeping failing to suffice, the civic body has proposed a second round of sweeping during the evening hours in the city.

Rishi Agarwal, an activist who has been working in waste management since 1995, pointed to the rising amount of dry waste, fuelled by the rise of quick delivery services. “With urban lifestyle and the ease of online ordering, a large number of people are opting for delivery services, which leads to generation of massive packaging waste,” Agarwal said.

The quantum of garbage generated by unauthorised hawkers in the city also pose a challenge with heaps of wet waste piling up in big markets such as Dadar.

The C&D waste has also emerged as a new challenge for the civic body as the debris from construction activity is typically discarded at open grounds or mangrove pockets without treatment. Published in 2025, Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Waste Management in Urban Local Bodies revealed that Maharashtra’s C&D waste has burgeoned by over 200 per cent in the past four years. While the state generated 16.59 lakh metric tonnes of C&D waste in 2018-2019, the debris  generated in 2021-2022 soared to a whopping 63.12 lakh metric tonnes.

Even as the civic body has launched new processing facilities, officials said that the existing plants are only able to cater to 10 per cent of the actual C&D waste generated each day.

The dumping grounds have also triggered concerns. While studies and residents in M/East ward have flagged rising ailments owing to their proximity to the Deonar dumping ground, citizens in the Vikhroli-Kanjurmarg-Bhandup belt have been complaining of stench from the Kanjurmarg treatment facility.

Sanjay Yelve, a resident of Kannamwar Nagar, near the Kanjurmarg facility, said, “The stench is so bad that we cannot even eat or keep our windows open during the evenings. People have also been experiencing skin and respiratory problems. A couple of months ago, we submitted documents from doctors, residents flagging how we have been facing health concerns with the government while we also did a signature campaign six months ago.” Recently, the BMC floated a tender to conduct an odour audit to determine a plan to curb the crisis.

However, Yelve called for the need to permanently shift the Kanjurmarg facility to the outskirts of the city. On May 2, 2025, the Bombay High Court  declared a 119.91-hectare portion of the larger 141.77 hectare landfill at Kanjurmarg as a “protected forest” under the Forest Conservation Act (FCA) in what nudged the civic body into a tight spot. However, the Supreme Court stayed the Bombay HC verdict that declared the Kanjurmarg landfill a “protected forest”, enabling the BMC to continue to operate the Kanjurmarg landfill.

At the Deonar ground, the civic body has initiated the process to clear the existing mounds of untreated legacy waste through bioremediation.

BMC’s plans going forward In a plan that seeks to overhaul the waste collection and garbage system in Mumbai, the BMC floated a Rs 4,000-crore tender through a service-based waste management system last year.

For the first time in 15 years, the civic body is set to replace its existing fleet of compactor vehicles with new and closed body eco-friendly trucks across all wards. Each compactor is proposed to have increased holding capacity. The plan proposes to outsource the work of collecting door-to-door waste as well as sweeping the open areas. The civic staff who are currently undertaking this work  will be tasked with the work of second shift sweeping. Damaged communities and garbage bins are also proposed to be replaced.

Officials pointed out that the project will increase accountability by fixing responsibilities on the contractors. The BMC has also proposed ancillary projects that seek to upgrade the existing facilities. To facilitate improved recycling, the civic body will upgrade its existing dry waste centres with the first phase entailing revamp of 10 of the 41 centres. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has allocated Rs 70 lakh for the modernisation of each centre.

Projects are also afoot to upgrade the four refuse transfer stations of Mumbai while also enhancing processing at the end points of Kanjurmarg facility and Deonar ground.

What experts are calling for At a time when the civic body is rolling out mega plans to cater to waste management, experts have called for improved accountability and strict implementation of its existing rulebook.

In 2025, the BMC implemented revised SWM bylaws that called for stricter penalties for littering, urinating in public spaces as well as illegally dumping C&D waste or feeding animals.

Bilal Khan, a city-based activist said, “Despite its own SWM bylaws, the BMC does not carry out proper segregation and thereby, the BMC does not abide by its own rules. Even though it is a crucial service, the BMC does not take the matter of waste management seriously.”

Calling for the need for decentralised treatment of waste across the city, waste management expert Agarwal  said, “At present, the BMC is preferring centralised solutions like Kanjurmarg and Deonar. Instead, all wards should be able to cater to 80 per cent of their waste within their jurisdiction. This means that waste from Dahisar should not have to come all the way to Kanjurmarg. The civic body has several vacant plots of land that can be utilised for treating waste locally and thereby decentralising the whole process.”

Pointing to the massive funds allocated for waste management, he added, “The BMC is flush with money. What it needs is integrity and accountability.”