Landfill sites in big cities becoming unmanageable

Punjab’s big cities are drowning in their own garbage, with mountains of legacy waste growing by the day.

Ludhiana generates about 1,100 metric tonne (MT) waste every day, the highest among state’s major municipal corporations. Jalandhar adds around 630 MT a day and Amritsar 520 MT, most of it still dumped without segregation at ever-expanding landfills.

Over nearly 15 years, all three corporations have repeatedly planned solid waste management projects and even sent officials on study tours to cities like Indore and Bengaluru, yet basic segregation at source remains missing.

As a result, the volume of old, untreated “legacy waste” has increased to an estimated 25 lakh metric tonne (LMT) in Ludhiana, 16 LMT in Jalandhar and 33 LMT in Amritsar.

In 2024, the National Green Tribunal imposed a penalty of about Rs 1,000 crore on the Punjab Government for persistent failure to manage solid and liquid waste, citing huge piles of legacy garbage across the state. The state later secured a stay on the order from the Supreme Court, but the Local Bodies Department continues to struggle to put an effective system in place.

Last month, the government floated around 1,726 tenders to cover every municipal committee in the state, aiming to overhaul collection and processing. However, a 10-day strike by safai karamcharis in small towns forced the project to be called off, with the department also terming the model financially unviable for modest town budgets.

Jalandhar’s first serious push came in 2012 with a contract to Jindal Urban Infrastructure Limited for garbage processing, following earlier moves in Ludhiana and talks in Amritsar. The project collapsed when land at Jamsher could not be handed over amid protests, and a subsequent Refuse Derived Fuel contract with A2Z also failed to take off.

Since then, proposals ranging from underground bins to drum and pit composting have remained largely on paper. At present, only about 3 MT of Jalandhar’s 630 MT daily waste (just 0.4 per cent) is being treated at a “Material Recovery Facility” in Pholariwal, and that too only over the past few days.

Faced with rising pressure, the Jalandhar MC floated a Rs 143.55-crore tender for door-to-door collection, segregation, transport, processing and disposal of fresh waste from 85 wards, but it drew no bidders. The corporation has now split the tender into two packages in the hope of attracting interest.

Bio-mining of legacy waste, which remained a non-starter for years, has finally begun at the Wariana dump with Maharashtra-based contractor Sagar Motors. According to Mayor Vaneet Dhir, the firm has secured a PSPCL power connection and started bio-mining on half the legacy waste, recently beginning to clear around 2,000 tonnes per day from the site.

Hoshiarpur has launched a tightly focused pilot project in two wards under Deputy Commissioner Aashika Jain. The plan centres on strict segregation at home, synchronising the timing of handcarts and garbage trucks so that waste moves directly from carts to trucks, eliminating roadside secondary dumping points.

The model also proposes separate wet-waste collection from hotels and restaurants, direct movement of compostable material to pits, and routing remaining waste to the Piplanwala dumping site, where plastic is earmarked for reuse.

District officials are in talks with a tile manufacturer in Aurangabad willing to use Hoshiarpur’s plastic waste in tile production, tying city cleanliness to a clear end-use market.

Across Punjab’s cities, the details of each project differ, but the underlying lessons are strikingly similar. Decentralised systems, genuine involvement of local residents and workers, and uncompromising enforcement of segregation and collection norms are no longer optional—these are urgent steps needed before the state’s waste crisis goes completely out of control.