Sustainable City-Building Requires Proper Eco-Waste Management

With the ‘smart environment’ perceived to play a major role in building smart cities, prioritizing environmental sustainability is critical. With the present status of cities being a center of urban conglomeration, building and reshaping them into smart cities require smarter and sustainable solutions. 

Yogendra Singh, Deputy Commissioner, Ujjain Municipal Corporation speaking at a panel discussion building smarter cities shared on the developments made in the building city of Ujjain. He shared that a 200 tonne of waste is collected of which 99.50 per cent is processed, which is converted into biogas. Singh added further that there has been work done in the direction of city beautification and a Swachch Ujjain app been developed to facilitate in the process. “Ujjain has been built on the values of reduce, recycle, and reuse,” Singh said. 

Taking the discussion further, Shivkumar Vanjari, HOD – Environment, Nashik Municipal Corporation addressing the issue of climate change, stated, “We are constantly hearing the issue of climate change – we need to have judicious use of air, water.” Adding to the discussion, S K Sundrani, GM (E&T), Raipur Smart City included the challenge of eco-waste management. Sundrani shared his story of when he and his team went to the temples and asked them to separate flowers that get dumped into the drainage. As a development, the flowers are now collected and treated separately. 

Sanjay Ghuge, City Engineer, Nashik Municipal Corporation gave recommendations based on his experience in working towards building smarter cities, shared: whatever material is used for the construction should be locally used/available. He proposed the need for the development of green buildings for the smart cities mission. (Green buildings is the practice of building structure and process that is environment sensible and resource-efficient)

Ramnath Sonawane, Secretary, Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority, Government of Maharashtra, moderating the panel stated the key needs of dealing with the waste to build sustainable cities. 

 The above experts were presenting at the BW Businessworld organized 8th Smart Cities Conclave.