TRASH IN INDIA: RUBBISH MOUNTAINS, SCAVENGERS, FIRES, CLEANING UP, RECYCLING

WHY IS THERE IS SO MUCH GARBAGE IN INDIA

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India’s is a fabulous country. There are so many interesting things there. But the one thing that is hard to overlook and can detract from the whole experience of being in India is the garbage. Sometimes it seems that every unoccupied space is filled with litter and waste. And its not totally a collection issue as you often see people flippantly and seemingly unconciously drop plastic wrappers and papers on the street as if were the normal course of events.

Experts say India's severe garbage crisis stems from a combination of rapid population growth, inadequate municipal infrastructure, shifting consumption patterns, and complex socio-cultural dynamics. With a population exceeding 1.4 billion people, even a relatively low per-capita waste generation rate accumulates into millions of tons of trash nationwide each day. Rapid urbanization has severely outpaced the financial and operational capacity of local governments, leaving municipal bodies struggling to build, maintain, and scale modern sanitation facilities. [Source: Jayant Mundhra, Bharat Name, June 4, 2025]

India has also had to deal with a massive surge in consumerism and plastic reliance over recent decades. Single-use plastic packaging has flooded the consumer market, rapidly replacing traditional, biodegradable packaging materials faster than waste management systems can adapt. Furthermore, civic norms surrounding shared public spaces often lag behind personal hygiene practices, leading to widespread littering in streets, waterways, and open land. Deep-seated historical attitudes toward sanitation labor have also historically depressed institutional investment and public accountability, making civic cleanliness an ongoing structural struggle. [Source: The Wire]

Waste and recycling: municipal solid waste generated annually: 189.75 million tons (2024 estimate); percent of municipal solid waste recycled: 17.8 percent (2022 estimate). [Source: CIA World Factbook]

According to a survey of expatriates living in Asia, India, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Hong Kong were regarded as the dirties countries in Asia while Singapore, Japan and Malaysia were regarded as the cleanest. Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan were in the middle.

Shortcoming of Trash Collection in India

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India suffers from rapidly growing municipal solid waste, inadequate recycling infrastructure, and electronic waste accumulation. Open dumping and poorly managed landfills are common near urban peripheries. Soil degradation and heavy metal contamination threaten local food supplies and groundwater safety. Cities in India can't collect all the trash produced. Corrupt contractors and paralytic unions have meant that often trash is rarely collected even in good neighborhoods. The accumulation of garbage is sometimes described as crisis or state wide emergency. [Source: Wikipedia]

Laura Parker wrote in National Geographic: Trash collection in India’s cities is often inefficient, and collection rates are low. The situation is more disheartening in rural areas, where about two-thirds of Indians live. In the state of Bihar, which has a population of 129 million, roughly the size of Japan’s, plastic waste gets burned or dumped in ad hoc sites, where foraging cows and other animals inadvertently consume it. Or it’s deposited on a sandbar for Ganga to carry away. [Source: Laura Parker, National Geographic, April 2022]

On top of this some industrialized countries send their garbage to India to be recycled and processed. Attention was drawn to the issue after the September 11th terrorist attck because some of the material salvaged from “Ground Zero” was sent to India and there were reports it contained PCBs, asbestos, dioxons, mercury and lead.

And then there’s the smell. Mumbai’s Deonar and Mulund landfill sites are particularly infamous for theor stench. In 2008, the Mumbai City Council planned to spray 42,000 liters of herbal deodorant over the sites, spending about $160,000 on the six-month program. The Deonar landfill covered more than 120 hectares and had received untreated waste since 1927. Residents criticized the deodorant plan as a temporary measure, while experts said Mumbai lacked adequate facilities to manage the roughly 7,500 metric tons of waste generated daily. Plans to close and redevelop the landfills faced further environmental concerns because untreated waste at former sites continued to release toxic fumes. [Source: Rhys Blakely, The Times, August 28, 2008]

Mawlynnong — the Cleanest Village in Asia

Mawlynnong (92 kilometers from Shillong in northeast India ) was declared the cleanest village in Asia in 2003 and the cleanest in India in 2005. The village is locally referred to as 'God's Own Garden' and is commended for its community-based eco-tourism initiative. Under this, the onus of keeping the village clean lies on every resident and to promote cleanliness, bamboo garbage bins dot the lanes, nooks and corners of Mawlynnong.

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The waste collected in the bins is sent to a pit and turned into manure. Smoking is prohibited here and so is plastic. Rainwater harvesting is considered very important and is practised by almost all its residents. In addition, the village boasts a 100 per cent literacy rate and most of the inhabitants are fluent in English.

Since it is located on the Indo-Bangla border, one can enjoy a sweeping view of Bangladesh. Another reason to mark this place in your itinerary is the natural rock balancing phenomenon that is seen here - the unusual and curious sight of one boulder balanced on another. Tourists can also enjoy a trek to a single-decker living root bridge here.

India’s Rubbish Mountains

Dhruv Khullar wrote in The New Yorker: The Bhalswa landfill, on the outskirts of Delhi, is an apocalyptic place. A gray mountain of dense, decaying trash rises seventeen stories, stretching over some fifty acres. Broken glass and plastic containers stand in for grass and stones, and plastic bags dangle from spindly trees that grow in the filth. Fifteen miles from the seat of the Indian government, cows rummage for fruit peels and pigs wallow in stagnant water...The dusty road leading to Bhalswa is lined with ramshackle shops and gutters full of stagnant water... Thousands of people who live in slums near the mountain’s base work as waste pickers, collecting, sorting, and selling the garbage created by around half of Delhi’s residents. [Source: Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker, July 25, 2022]

The rubbish mountain in Mumbai's Deonar is 18 storeys high. Established in 1927, it is described as Asia’s oldest and largest garbage dump. Mumbai, a city of about 21 million people, generates roughly 10,000 tons of largely unsegregated and untreated garbage each day, with more than half going to Deonar. The landfill is not equipped with adequate waste-treatment facilities, and experts say it lacks measures such as clay lining to prevent toxic substances from contaminating soil and groundwater. The contractor responsible for the dump says the municipal government delivers more than 6,000 tons of waste daily, more than twice the agreed amount. The accumulation of untreated waste creates conditions in which fires can repeatedly develop. [Source: Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, February 3, 2016; Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post April 15, 2016]

Saumya Roy reported for the BBC: ““More than 16 million tonnes of trash make up Deonar's rubbish mountains — eight of them spread over a 300-acre sprawl.... Waste is piled as high as 120 feet (36.5 metere). The sea forms the outer edge of the mountains and slums have been built into the sturdy heaps of rubbish. “The decomposing waste releases noxious gases such as methane, hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide. In 2016, it erupted in fires that burned for months and caused smoke in much of Mumbai. Rubbish fires at landfills contributed 11 percent of particulate matter, a major cause of air pollution in the city, according to a 2011 study by India's pollution regulator. [Source: Saumya Roy, BBC, October 18, 2021]

A 2020 study by a Delhi-based think tank, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), found 3,159 such mountains containing 800 million tonnes of rubbish across India. “In Mumbai, a court case has been going on for 26 years to close down the Deonar grounds but the dumping of waste continues. Authorities proposed a new landfill outside Mumbai, with mandatory waste segregation but officials acknowledged that moving the city's waste would take at least 18 months. [Source: Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, February 3, 2016; Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post April 15, 2016]

Scavangers at India’s Rubbish Mountains

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Syed Shah and his family lived less than 20 feet from Deonar landfill, collecting plastic, metal and coconut shells to sell. “This garbage dump is our daily bread,” he said, arguing that the city could not simply close the landfill without providing alternatives for people who depended on it. [Source: Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, February 3, 2016; Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post April 15, 2016]

Saumya Roy reported for the BBC: ““Every morning, Farha Shaikh stands on top of a more-than-a-century-old rubbish mountain in Mumbai, waiting for garbage trucks to make their way up. The 19-year-old waste picker has been scavenging through these heaps in the Deonar suburb for as long as she can remember. [Source:Saumya Roy, BBC, October 18, 2021]

“From the gloopy trash, she usually picks up plastic bottles, glass and wire to sell in the city's thriving waste markets. But most of all she looks out for broken mobile phones. Every few weeks, Farha finds a "dead" mobile phone in the trash. She digs into her meagre savings and gets it repaired. Once it flickers to life, she spends her evenings watching films, playing video games, texting and calling friends. When the phone stops working again days or weeks later, Farha's connection with the world outside snaps again. She is back to working long days, collecting the remains of the city to resell - and looking for another phone to restore.

“It became much harder for scavengers to access the waste mountains after the fires in 2016. The municipality has increased security to prevent waste pickers from going in and lighting fires - the flames melt the lighter trash, bringing up metal that fetches high prices. The waste pickers who manage to sneak in are often beaten, detained and sent back. But some bribe the guards or enter before the security patrols begin at daylight. So, little segregation happens at the grounds in Denoar now - instead, a lot of the waste is segregated in the city itself, and what arrives at Deonar has reduced over time.

“Farha hasn't had a phone for months. She has to bribe guards at least 50 rupees ($0.67; £0.49) every day to get in and work at the Deonar grounds. To recover this, she even thought of picking through the rubbish that began arriving from the city's Covid hospital wards last year.

“But her family asked her not to pick up the "harmful" Covid waste. So, she hangs close, watching pickers wear protective gear in the rain to keep collecting plastic to resell. The city was sending new trash, and as they had for years, the mountains had to accommodate it and pickers had to collect and resell it. "Hunger will kill us if not illness," Farha says.

Huge Garbage Fire in Mumbai

In January 2016, a massive fire at Mumbai’s Deonar landfill sent thick smoke across the city for four days and was visible from space in NASA satellite images. The fire produced a dense, toxic smog that forced about 70 schools to close, while 14 firetrucks and 8 bulldozers were used to control the blaze. NASA noted that landfill fires are particularly difficult to extinguish because they can burn through methane, plastic and other highly flammable materials. The cause was uncertain, although authorities suspected that the fire may have been deliberately started by people trying to recover recyclable materials. The incident highlighted the problems created by Mumbai’s inadequate waste-management system. [Source: Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, February 3, 2016; Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post April 15, 2016]

The fires became a public-health concern, with residents reporting coughing, respiratory problems and the smell of smoke embedded in clothing and furniture. Some residents kept their children home from school, while firefighters working to extinguish the flames became ill. Doctors reported increased respiratory illnesses and said some asthma patients were no longer responding normally to their medication. The landfill was also surrounded by a large settlement where children played among overflowing waste and open drains. The scale of the problem illustrated the broader challenge facing rapidly growing Indian cities: in 2016, only about 23 percent of urban solid waste in India was being processed.

The fires also sparked a new wave of environmental activism among Mumbai's middle-class residents. People living near the landfill organized marches and sit-ins, circulated petitions, contacted government officials through social media and monitored air-quality readings on their smartphones. Some residents called Deonar “Mumbai’s silent killer” and a “toxic time bomb.” One resident, Rajesh Valappil, said, “I updated the Wikipedia page on Deonar. Then I emailed NASA and requested them to release a new image. That is how desperate we are here.” The activism exposed a growing demand for better waste management and stronger government action.

Dhapa — the Landfill in Kolkata That Is Permanently on Fire

The Dhapa landfill on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata, India, is a major waste-disposal site where thousands of people live and work. In 2016, about 4,000 metric tons (4,400 U.S. tons) of municipal waste were reportedly dumped there each day, while an estimated 30,000 people lived on or around the landfill. The site supported a large informal economy based on collecting, sorting, recycling, and selling discarded materials. [Source: Vidhi Doshi, The Guardian, 24 October 2016]

The landfill posed significant environmental and health risks. Fires burned continuously in parts of the dump, producing smoke and air pollution. Workers attributed some of the fires to gases generated by the decomposition of organic waste. Unstable piles of garbage also created risks for workers and vehicles, particularly during the monsoon season when wet waste could cause the ground to collapse. Trucks had overturned on the landfill, and people had died in accidents.

People living and working at Dhapa reported respiratory difficulties and other illnesses associated with the polluted environment. Residents described frequent sickness, poor air quality, and unpleasant odors. The landfill’s conditions were particularly difficult for people who both lived and worked among the waste.

The landfill had developed into a center for informal waste processing. Ragpickers and scrap dealers sorted recyclable materials, while some residents operated small recycling businesses. Plastic waste, for example, was melted and processed into material used to make pipes. Low land costs and limited economic opportunities attracted poor residents to the area, although housing was generally cramped and sanitation conditions were poor.

Agriculture and fish farming also developed around the landfill. Vegetables were grown on land near the dump, and some wetlands were converted into fish farms. Local farmers reported using the area because land was inexpensive and waste provided readily available fertilizer. The safety of food produced in the area was disputed, although Kolkata officials stated that food grown at Dhapa had been tested and had not been shown to cause problems.

Dhapa had existed since the colonial period, when Kolkata was known as Calcutta and served as the capital of British India. As the city’s population and waste production increased, the landfill expanded into a large landscape of accumulated garbage. Attempts by the Kolkata municipal government to relocate the dumping site faced opposition and environmental restrictions.

The problems at Dhapa reflected wider challenges in India’s urban waste-management system. In 2016, India’s urban population generated an estimated 62 million metric tons (68 million U.S. tons) of waste annually. Government cleanliness campaigns had improved the appearance of some urban areas, but large quantities of untreated waste continued to be deposited in landfills, contributing to environmental degradation and health risks.

Kolkata authorities faced difficulties in relocating Dhapa and improving conditions for its residents. The municipal government cited the cost of moving the landfill and the large number of households already established there. Environmental restrictions also complicated plans to develop alternative dumping sites because some proposed areas were protected wetlands.

Plastic Waste in India

Laura Parker wrote in National Geographic: The miracle of plastics arrived in India recently enough that there is no Hindi word for the stuff, and in some places take-out food still comes wrapped in banana leaves. The love affair really took off in the 1990s, as the rapid growth of the global plastics industry coincided with the liberalizing of India’s economy. If in the U.S. the golden age of plastics ushered in the throwaway culture of convenience, in India, affordable plastic consumer goods simply made life better—not only for the expanding middle class but also for those who live near the bottom rung. Plastic storage containers, bags, and food wrap helped keep food fresh longer. Barefoot children could get cheap shoes, and inexpensive synthetic fabrics allowed them more clothes. Tiny sachets provided people with access to products they couldn’t afford to buy in larger volumes. [Source: Laura Parker, National Geographic, April 2022]

Yet even with the improving quality of life, the romance faded fast. Before the decade ended, India found itself swimming in plastic packaging waste that outpaced any ability to contain it. By the mid-1990s, newspaper accounts sounded the alarm. Plastic bags, handed out by the thousands in department stores in Mumbai, were “suffocating the city.” Delhi landfills were an impending “eco disaster.”

The problem has since spread beyond cities to rural areas and even nature reserves, where numerous species, from leopards to foxes to birds, have been seen eating plastic. At the Rajaji National Park outside Rishikesh, a pilgrimage city in the Himalayan foothills made famous in the West by the Beatles, who spent several weeks there in 1968, elephants are eating plastics in dump sites around the edges of the park.

“There are many places just outside the forest where villagers throw trash out, and the wild animals go there to eat,” ranger Mohammad Yusuf told me, as we toured the park’s grassy meadows and stands of tall pines. “I have seen plastic in elephant poop many times in the last five years.”

In nearly every nation struggling to contain plastic waste, the problem is primarily packaging, most of which is discarded immediately after use. Globally, it accounts for 36 percent of the nearly 500 million tons of plastic manufactured annually. India’s problem has less to do with per capita consumption than lack of adequate waste collection. In the United States, a person creates an average of 286 pounds of plastic waste a year—the highest rate in the world and more than six times India’s rate of 44 pounds per person. But the U.S. has a more or less functioning system of trash collection and disposal.

Since 2016 the Indian government has been working on new regulations that would require producers of plastic packaging to take responsibility for the cost of collecting and recycling their disposable products. Similar regulations, known as extended producer responsibility, or EPR, have helped curb plastic waste in the European Union since the mid-1990s. In the U.S., the plastics industry has opposed national legislation. Only Maine and Oregon have passed laws requiring EPR for plastic packaging.

Air India Flight forced to Turn Back Because of Trash Clogging the Toilet

An Air India flight from Chicago to New Delhi was forced to turn back about five hours into its journey after eight of the plane’s 12 toilets became unusable. The Boeing 777-300ER had been flying over the Atlantic when crew determined that the lavatories were clogged with polythene bags, rags and clothes that passengers had flushed down the toilets. [Source: Karina Tsui and Esha Mitra, CNN, March 11, 2025]

The crew first reported toilet problems about 1 hour and 45 minutes after departure. Because of the number of blocked toilets and restrictions on nighttime operations at European airports, the airline decided to return to Chicago, where passengers were given hotel accommodation and alternative travel arrangements. The flight turned around over Greenland, making the total journey about 10 hours. Air India said this was not the first time foreign objects had been flushed down its aircraft toilets. Previous incidents involved blankets, underwear and diapers, among other waste.

Efforts to Clean Up India

Plastic bags are banned in Mumbai, Delhi and other places. The "mountains of garbage" have been replaced in some some cities with waste treatment plants. In October, 2021, the India government announced nearly $13 billion for a national cleanliness programme that would include setting up a number of sewage treatment plants to gradually replace open air rubbish dumps such as the one in Deonar. [Source: Saumya Roy, BBC, October 18, 2021]

But experts have their doubts, "While it has been done in smaller cities, it is hard to provide a remedy for waste mountains at this scale," Siddharth Ghanshyam Singh, deputy program manager at CSE, told the BBC. "There is an acknowledgement that this is a problem but we have accepted that if we are to live in big cities like Mumbai or Delhi, these garbage mountains come with it," says Dharmesh Shah, country co-ordinator for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, a coalition of groups that advocate for reduced waste.

According to the BBC; “Since 2000, India has passed rules asking municipalities to process waste. But most states report only partial compliance, and there are not enough waste treatment plants. Mumbai, India's commercial and entertainment capital and home to some 20 million people, has just one such plant. There are now plans for a waste-to-energy plant at Deonar. India Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi said he expects the plan to create new, green jobs. But that worries waste pickers like Farha who have been doing this job all their lives.

Modi’s 2014 Clean Up Campaign

After being elected prime minister of India in 2014, Narendra Modi launched a five-year campaign called Swachh Bharat Abhiyan — Clean India Mission — to encourage Indias to pick up broom and clean up streets, parks and other public places near their homes and ordered government workers to clean their own workplaces on public holidays. Haresh Gandhi, the manager of Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, a place not known for its cleanliness, did hos part to clean up the station. He told The Guardian. “This is something we are doing not just for India but for the planet. The whole world needs to come together. Everybody needs to do it...We are not good at it compared with other countries, but we must try,” said Gandhi, the station manager. [Source: Jason Burke, The Guardian, October 2, 2014]

The Guardian reported: At Nizamuddin station, all 1,600 staff had worked in shifts for three days to clean away the piles of food wrappers, plastic tea cups, betel nut stains and plastic that usually greet passengers. A usually reeking toilet smelt of soap. “I must have done 1,000 hours. We have to keep it going, though. There has to be people’s participation,” said Shelly Srivastava, who works at the Delhi division office of India’s railways. Modi helped cleans a road in Delhi and visited a neighbourhood that is home to members of the Valmiki caste, whose occupation is traditionally “manual scavenging”, a euphemism for clearing other people’s faeces by hand. “Don’t we all have a duty to clean the country?” the prime minister said.

The campaign was expected to cost about $9 billion, with three quarters coming from the corporate sector, international development organisations and elsewhere.One of its chief aims was to build sufficient toilets to end the problem of “open defecation”. “Unicef estimates that almost 594 million – or nearly 50 percent of India’s population – relieve themselves in fields, woods or rivers, mostly in poor rural areas. Around 300 million women and girls are forced to squat outside, usually under the cover of darkness, exposed not only to the risks of disease and bacterial infection, but also harassment and assault by men. The issue was highlighted earlier this year when two girls, aged 12 and 14, were found hanged after they went into the fields after dark in Uttar Pradesh. Police are investigating if they had been gang-raped before being killed.

Citizen-Based Clean Up Campaigns in India

Activists, community groups, schools, and volunteers have been involved in promoting better waste management in Indian cities. In 2013, India generated more than 55 million tons of solid waste annually, and the amount was expected to increase substantially as urban populations grew. Poor municipal waste collection contributed to widespread littering, overflowing garbage bins, and waste accumulation in streets, drains, rivers, and other public areas.[Source: Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, April 15, 2013]

Community groups also organized cleanup campaigns at markets, beaches, railway stations, schools, and other public places. Activists encouraged residents to avoid littering and to take greater responsibility for separating and disposing of household waste. Some campaigns also used smartphones to photograph uncollected garbage and report it to government authorities.

In Mumbai, students, activists, and Bollywood actors participated in beach cleanups following a Hindu festival during which large numbers of people immersed religious idols and offerings in the sea. In New Delhi, student volunteers organized cleanup campaigns and encouraged greater awareness of waste disposal.

Some activists sought to make waste separation part of everyday behavior. Campaigners in Bangalore promoted the separation of recyclable materials, while candidates and community organizations encouraged residents to adopt household recycling and composting practices. These efforts reflected growing public concern about the capacity of India’s cities to manage increasing quantities of waste.

Recycling in India

Recycling: percent of municipal solid waste recycled: 17.8 percent (2022 estimate). [Source: CIA World Factbook]

Households and businesses rarely separate organic waste from recyclables and hazardous materials at the source, making systematic recycling extremely difficult. Instead of being sorted and treated, a vast proportion of municipal solid waste skips processing altogether, moving directly from homes into open street dumps or piling onto already overflowing urban landfills.

In India recycling is often done by the trash collectors, who sort through the garbage and sell the recyclable materials. In the past, and maybe still today, bones were collected in Calcutta and boiled in huge vats to remove the fat. The bones were then crushed by noisy grinding machines into fertilizer. There were also people who sifted through burnt coal, looking for unused pieces which they wash and recycle. Nothing was wasted. Ropes were made from coconut husks. [Source: Peter White, National Geographic, April 1983]

Activists, community groups, schools, and volunteers have been increasingly promoting recycling in Indian cities. One focus of the campaigns was encouraging households to separate recyclable and compostable materials from other waste — an approach that could significantly reduce the amount of garbage sent to landfills. In Bangalore, for example, local authorities ordered residents to separate recyclables and compostable waste from other household refuse after protests over overflowing landfills and uncollected garbage. However, the separation requirement was not effectively enforced. [Source: Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, April 15, 2013]

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Library of Congress, CIA World Factbook, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Encyclopedia.com, Live Science, The Conversation, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Google AI, Wikipedia, The Guardian and various websites, books and other publications.

Last updated August 2026