India Will Need Landfills The Size Of New Delhi District By 2050: Study

New Delhi: India needs to set aside at least 88 square kilometres of land -- the size of New Delhi district -- for landfills by 2050, industry lobby Assocham said today. "Considering that most of the waste in India is dumped without treatment, it would require an estimated 88 square kilometre of precious land to be brought under waste disposal through landfilling by 2050, which is equivalent to the size of area under administration of the New Delhi Municipal Council," a joint report by Assocham and accounting firm PwC said. "This will eventually render the land unfit for any other use for as long as a half century before it can be stabilised for other uses," the report 'Waste Management in India: Shifting Gears' said. With 50 per cent of India's population projected to be living in urban areas by 2050, the volume of waste generation will grow by five per cent every year, it said. Thus, the projected waste quantity is 101 million tonnes a year by 2021, 164 million tonnes a year by 2031, and 436 million tonnes a year by 2050, according to the report. It said that tier 1 cities with population ranging from one to five million have been estimated to generate 80 per cent of the country's total waste.