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Municipal solid waste management, source-separated waste and stakeholder’s attitude: a Contingent Valuation Study

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Abstract

Recognition of the social costs associated with traditional practices of urban waste management in India led to the formulation of Municipal Waste Management and Handling rules (2000). However, compliance with the proposed collection and disposal involves higher commitment in terms of both time and money on the part of the residents, local bodies as well as the state and central government. In this context, information about the value of the environmental improvements conferred upon the city dwellers would be important from the planner’s perspective. Given the non-market characteristic of waste disposal services, we infer about beneficiaries’ perceived demand for the proposed service by means of Double-Bounded Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation Survey conducted in the Bally Municipality in the district of Howrah, West Bengal. We estimate the average WTP by controlling for anchoring bias and use the annualized value of cost to examine the feasibility of the proposed system.

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Notes

  1. For instance, India generates 100 kg/capita of waste per annum that is the lowest among the OECD countries. The highest being 760 kg/capita for Norway (OECD Factbook 2008).

  2. The urban population in India has increased fivefold in the last six decades and 27.8% of the total population lives in urban area as per census 2001 (Hanrahan et al. 2006; India Infrastructure Report 2006).

  3. Among the 157 Indian cities included in the study, almost 90% of them did not have the required workforce i.e. 2800 workers/million population (or 2–3 workers per thousand of the total population) which is the accepted standard for most municipal corporations in India(Gupta et al. 1998; Hanrahan et al. 2006).

  4. Open defecation is mostly observed in slum areas and to tackle the problem government has initiated the National Sanitation Campaign (Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan) in 2001. Under this programme for construction of community toilets in slum areas, local governments and public authorities can get 50% subsidies (Burra et al. 2003). In terms of targeting and beneficiary participation, the programme seems to fare well and its design element also ensures some degree of consumption efficiency (Buckley et al. 2007).

  5. Liquid that accumulates dissolved or suspended materials as it permeates the solid waste in the landfill.

  6. In a study of best practice in Surat (“After the Plague-Surat, http://indiagovernance.gov.in/surat.php) it has been mentioned that after the flood of August 1994 the dead caracasses of animals were not removed for 3 weeks.

  7. In fact, it is already recognized in the literature that a particular state of environment can be achieved in a least cost way through a combination of standards and economic instruments than with standards alone (Baumol and Oates 1988).

  8. It is estimated that per capita waste generation in India cities ranges from 0.2 to 0.5 kg per day (Sharholy 2008).

  9. Total strength of workers in the conservancy department including the contractual workers and those working on daily wages is 464.

  10. The dumping ground is located in a place called Chandmari and is over 100 years old.

  11. For a detailed account of Contingent Valuation studies see the review by Carson and Hanemann (2005).

  12. Such contributions can come either in the form of labour hours spent or in the form of money.

  13. In 1992, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) convened a panel of prominent social scientists to assess the reliability of natural resource damage estimates derived from Contingent Valuation (CV). The product of the panel's deliberations was a report that laid out a set of recommended guidelines for CV survey design, administration and data analysis.

  14. For a detailed discussion of optimal bid design strategies see Kannien (1993) and Alberini (1995).

  15. Explaining the overstating of WTP, Carson and Groves (2007) argue that this tendency arises from free-riding motives of the individuals where they think that their consent would only encourage the provision of the good while they can adjust their purchase decisions later. If the supply potential of the good is expected to be an increasing function of the aggregate contribution, there is always an incentive to yea saying irrespective of the difference between his latent WTP and the posted price.

  16. According to International monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook (WEO) data base per capita GDP for the developed and the least developed countries ranges from $5,000 to $1,000 and less than $1,000, respectively. In 2007, India’s per capita GDP was $941.557 WEO (2008) that translates into a figure of Rs. 3772.60 per month (using 1USD = 48.076 INR as of 18/6/2009).

  17. Households that recycle all four items constitute 46.12 percentages of the total sampled households. Then comes the household who recycle three items (24.61%), one item (15.12%) and two items (14.15%).

  18. Per capita household income is obtained by dividing the total household income by the number of family members.

  19. The influence of ethnicity on the demand for curbside recycling services is also observed by Hong et al. (1993). However, our analysis estimates household recycling activities in the informal sector as against household participation in a government led recycling programme in Hong et al. (1993).

  20. Monthly income is measured in intervals starting from less than 1,500 to greater than 50,000.

  21. There may be an endogeneity problem here if the non-Bengali respondents are richer that those whose mother tongue is Bengali. However, t-test for mean difference in income across these two language groups rejects the null hypothesis of equality of average incomes at 5% level.

  22. To understand this result, it must be kept in mind that for the programme to be successful in its entirety it’s necessary for a sizeable number of households to actually go by the norms of the service like practicing proper source segregation. Thus, unless the household has an element of trust for his immediate neighborhood, he would rather not commit resources for the programme that may stop in the long run due to shirking of the residents. Thus, those households that believe collective effort in other community projects are likely may think that such efforts would be there for the waste management programme and so they are convinced about the future viability of the system. Hence, these people would be more likely to avail the programme.

  23. 54% of the sampled household revealed that source separation would be carried out by female members of the family and among them only 4% were engaged in paid activities.

  24. We also tested for the impact of age, sex and mother tongue (as a proxy for ethnicity) on WTP. Age displayed a significant negative coefficient, and a significant positive coefficient was observed for sex of the respondents in the first response equation only. In the second response equation, they both dropped out of significance. Mother tongue was not significant in either of the two equations. When all the covariates were introduced age and sex both became statistically insignificant and had to be dropped from the final regression.

  25. When an individual is uncertain about the value of the non- market good, he may consider the value of the good being prompted by the first bid. Hence, he “anchors” his follow-up response on the first bid and so his response may not truly reveal his actual preference (Mitchell and Carson 1989). For various empirical works on controlling anchoring bias see Whitehead (2002) and Herriges and Shogren (1996).

  26. For an empirical exercise and theoretical explanation see Banerjee and Sarkhel (2008).

  27. We also estimated the Mean WTP using a Random Effect Probit model that constrains the parameters to be identical across the two response equations (Haab and McConnell 2002). However, the estimates are not significantly different from the bivariate model and so we do not report the results here.

  28. This is also the figure estimated on the basis of sample households in our survey. KMDA also assumed this figure in its Direct Project Report of Bally Municipality.

  29. 1 Indian Rupee (INR) = 0.021 US Dollar (USD).

  30. The cost estimates are taken from the Detailed Project Report (DPR) prepared by Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) for Bally Municipality.

  31. 1 lakh = One hundred Thousand (105).

  32. The lifetime of inventories is actually a simple average of conventional figures of 14 years for vehicles and machinery and that of buildings that ranges from 20 to 30 years (Shah and Sambaraju 1997). To this average, we added 3 years for the investment of Rs. 373 lakh (37.3 million INR) is actually incurred over this period that can be considered as a gestation lag of the project. The rate of interest is given under the National Programme on Energy Recovery from Urban and Industrial Wastes that promotes alternative disposal options among Urban Local Bodies in India.

  33. In fact, the 25 ton compost produced per day from the proposed 40 ton capacity of compost plant in Bally area is expected to be sold at Rs. 3,500 per ton.

  34. The other two being Joint Implementation (JI) that promotes GHG emission reducing projects within Annex-I countries by trading of Emission Reduction Units (ERU), and International Emission Trading (IET) involving trading of Kyoto Protocol Units (KPU) and part of ERU and CER within Annex-I parties.

  35. For a discussion of these issues in Contingent Valuation and Cost-Benefit Analysis see Whitehead and Blomquist (2006).

  36. In a CV study of a sanitation project in the Philippines Lauria et al. (1999)) rules against the project implementation not only because the low WTP would not cover the project cost but also due to the fact that people weigh solid waste problems more than sanitation and thus are not willing to cooperate in this project that they at that moment of time think is unimportant. To our favour, solid waste problem in Bally area is considered to be the second most important problem after drinking water supply.

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Acknowledgments

The Contingent Valuation Study reported in this paper was funded by University Grants Commission, India. We are grateful to Dr. Arup Mallik (former Professor, Calcutta University) for useful suggestions regarding programme viability part of the study and Dr. Zakir Husain (Associate Professor, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata) for comments on questionnaire design. The cordial help of Bally Municipality officials during field visits is gratefully acknowledged. For assistance in survey work, we thank Saikat Mitra, Susmita Paul, Subrata Majumder and Buddhadev Saren. The usual disclaimer applies.

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  1. Department of Economics, Lalbaba College, Howrah, 711202, West Bengal, India

    Prasenjit Sarkhel

  2. Department of Economics, Calcutta University, 56A, B.T. Road, Kolkata, 700050, West Bengal, India

    Sarmila Banerjee

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  1. Prasenjit Sarkhel
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Correspondence to Prasenjit Sarkhel.

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Sarkhel, P., Banerjee, S. Municipal solid waste management, source-separated waste and stakeholder’s attitude: a Contingent Valuation Study. Environ Dev Sustain 12, 611–630 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-009-9215-2

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