A LEGACY THAT STINKS

India faces several significant challenges in remediating its legacy waste, which could derail its goal of becoming garbage-free by 2025-26

- ATUN ROY CHOUDHURY, JITESH LALWANI, SOVIK DAS AND NEHA SINGH

WHILE THE word “legacy” typically refers to a valuable inheritance from the past, legacy waste is anything but a gift. These vast mounds of accumulated municipal solid waste (MSW) pose severe risks to human health and the environment while also occupying prime urban land. They generate leachate, a foul, dark liquid that kills vegetation around the dumps and irreversibly contaminates water sources, according to India’s Guidelines for Disposal of Legacy Waste, released in February 2019. These sites also emit methane, a greenhouse gas, and frequently catch fire, degrading air quality.

Recognising the challenge, the Union government launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) 2.0 in 2021, setting an ambitious target to eliminate all legacy waste from cities by 2025-26. However, progress has been sluggish. With a little more than a year remaining, data from the scheme’s dashboard, accessed on February 18, 2025, reveals that India still has 119.1 million tonnes of legacy waste spread across 3,498 hectares. Meanwhile, the country’s failure to scientifically process fresh MSW complicates the matter. In 2021-22, India could only process 46.27 per cent of its MSW, leaving nearly 28.77 million tonnes of fresh waste untreated, according to the Central Pollution Control Board. This ultimately adds to the legacy waste burden.

A fundamental problem is that, despite the target, India does not yet have a formal definition of legacy waste. The legacy waste management guidelines state that the country’s waste management challenge began in the 1970s, when plastics became popular and households started disposing of wet waste in plastic bags. The industry informally considers MSW older than a year as legacy waste.