PPP in Solid Waste Management: A Study of Dehradun City in Uttarakhand

Solid Waste Management (SWM) has been under government’s control. Governments have been providing SWM and other services like sanitation, water supply, etc., through municipalities. But the level of service provided by these municipalities is not up to the mark. Also there is a need of infusing capital into this sector to cope with the emerging needs and increasing the level of service. This paper suggests a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model based on cross-subsidized approach: a nominal fee for garbage collection would be charged from commercial and households residing in organized apartment (societies) and the same money would help provide better services to the lower group of society. In return of this fee the garbage would be collected from their door steps. But for applying this model there has to be an optimal ratio of payers to subsidizers. If this ratio is not optimal then it will again make this model economically unviable. To overcome this problem, this paper suggests an integrated infrastructure development approach in which the private players who would be involved in collection and transportation of waste, would also process it. This means an ‘end-to-end’ solution. Selling electricity generated by waste would be the main source of revenue. However, as the power plant would be generating clean electricity, there would be carbon credits for this, which again is a source of income. And apart from this, municipality would pay a certain amount per truck of waste processed, i.e., tipping fee.