Chapter VI

Summary of findings and Conclusions

In the previous chapters an alternative model for solid waste management services,
willingness to pay for the same, the socio-economic factors affecting it and its effectiveness
from the perspective of environment and cost effectiveness in Kolkata Municipal area has
been elaborately discussed. This chapter is therefore devoted first to briefly outline the major
observations of the entire ongoing discussion. Thereafter the conclusion,limitations of the
study and any future implication has been notified at the end of the discussion.
6.1 Major Findings:
The major findings of our study are as follows:

In the inception we had a prelude of the basic solid waste management systems
existing presently. We have elaborated the stakeholders of the system, their roles, the
models of solid waste management and the pros and cons attached with each model. It
has actually pioneered our study to dig deep into the matter to search for an
alternative to mitigate the shortcomings

Due to the Loopholes in the existing system we therefore proposed a solid waste
management model which is based on public private partnership because from the
above discussions it is clear that PPP ensures innovation, efficiency and improved
level of services, together with compliance to environment, Health and safety.

While Kolkata Municipal Corporation does provide solid waste management service
to the residents but it is marred with serious performance drawbacks. Inadequate
collection and transportation is a regular issue which often lead to piling up of wastes
on the roadside. But the most serious issue which needs immediate attention is the
absence of proper Source segregation, scientific disposal and processing of the
wastes.

The wastes are regularly dumped into the dumping ground which is nearly saturated.
It leads to severe health and environmental hazards in the surrounding area. This lead
us to introduce waste to energy facility which will facilitate the scientific processing
of the waste in an environmentally viable way.

Next, important finding is the determination of willingness to pay for the effective
waste management services and the how the socio economic factors affect the
willingness to pay for the services.
What we have found from the survey conducted is that majority of the people accept
that there is one or other drawbacks in the system be that piling up of wastes, water
logging due to inefficient collection and transportation etc.
Still 50% of the total respondents have actually said that they are fairly happy with
existing services. 25 % of the respondents said they were not at all happy the other
25% was very happy. One of the major finding was majority nearly 70% of the
respondents are not concerned about the health or environmental hazards caused by
the in efficient services.
Perhaps this is the reason that even after pointing so many drawbacks in the system
70% of the people still prefer a government controlled service.

So, after eliciting these responses we described our alternative solution which
consisted of both government and private participation. After describing the positive
sides of the model like scientific segregation and processing of the waste, majority of
the respondents gave a go ahead for the model.
But, as the private participation will include a tipping fee which lead a few people to
backtrack. 75% of the respondents though were ready to pay a nominal fee for that
service while rest 25% got backtracked and the average willingness to pay finally
turned out to be Rs. 100.58 So, even few people were not very sure about paying for
the alternate service overall the model was accepted by the respondents.

Next comes one of our most important findings which reveals that socio-economic
factors should be adequately taken care of while formulating the waste management
models. From the discussions in the previous chapters it is clear that the statistically
significant independent factors like age, years of education, occupation, location do
affect the wiliness to pay for the alternative services. From a good R square value and
F value we can thus claim that our regression model is quite good enough to predict
the willingness to pay successfully.

After discussing about the willingness to pay and the factors affecting it we now
proceed to find the environmental viability and the cost effectiveness of the
alternative model. From various reports ranging from Ministry of environment,
Government of India to The chartered institutions of waste management it is fairly
clear that waste to energy facility can be regarded as not only a renewable resource of
power generation but as a green technology as well because it reduces the carbon and
greenhouse gas emissions.

Moreover, it is certainly a better option than the present disposal system i.e
unscientific landfilling because land filling leads to not only green house gas
generation but also lowers soil fertility and increases erosion.

In addition to that this waste to energy facility is also cost effective. Though it is not
the least costly but it is certainly cheaper than the advanced techniques of power
generation from the conventional non-renewable sources like coal. In chapter 5 we
can see that the least cost is incurred in power generation from convention coal which
is nonrenewable and has serious negative impact on environment. So, to do away with
this tradeoff waste to energy is certainly a better choice because advanced techniques
like carbon capture and storage is available but it increases the cost to community to a
large extent. On the other hand in waste to energy facility the cost to community gets
again reduced to such a large extent that even after remaining slight costly than the
conventional coal method it actually reduces the cost to community to a large extent.

6.3 Limitation of the study:

One of the main problem due to which the alternative Model is yet to gain traction is the lack
of awareness for which majority of the population still depends on the Government service
with all its shortcomings. Our primary emphasis was on to determine an average willingness
to pay for the service and how various factors are affecting the willingness to pay. In addition
to that we have also tried to judge the cost efficiency and environmental benefits of the
Model.
Lack of information is one of the primary impediments of this kind of research. We used
contingent valuation method doing the same. Where it is a known fact that though it is one of
the most popular method to establish a reliable estimate of the valuation of goods or services
but at the same time it is a stated preference method where the stated willingness to pay may
exceed the true feelings of payment for the same because the respondents only have a
hypothetical description of the service which may differ practically- in that case the valuation
may also differ significantly.
The next important point about this study is its environment-friendliness. From the above
discussion it is pretty clear that Waste to Energy facility is pretty sound environmentally and
much less costly than the other conventional techniques of waste processing. It would have
been better if we could provide a break-up of the detailed cost structures of the two different
approaches to show that how the costs are getting differentiated. We leave that matter as a
future scope of the project to give a detail cost benefit analysis of these two rival approacheswhich may give rise an altogether different study for realizing Waste to Energy facility
towards a near perfect model where it could surpass even the traditional energy generation
methods regarding cost effectiveness
6.3 Conclusion:
On the basis of the above discussions therefore we can try to answer the posed research
questions. Our first question was whether the model has been accepted to the people. We
found majority are willing to accept the alternative model. Regarding,the payment of tipping
fee for the alternative waste management services nearly 75% people are willing to pay while
25% backtracked. Then comes the second part of our second questions that how and whether
socio-economic factors affect the willingness to pay. The regression analysis conducted
shows significant effect of various socio economic factors like age, occupation, location,
education have a significant effect on the variations of the willingness to pay and the
statistical analysis does show that our model is well enough capable to predict that. The next,

query is whether it is environmentally viable and cost effective. which we have successfully
discussed in the previous chapters and summary of the findings that how it is helping us to
have a better environment in a cost effective manner. So, as a concluding remark we can say
that by creating the required infrastructures for an environmentally sustainable and costeffective collection & transportation system, recycling, processing & scientific disposal, it is
possible to reduce the quantity of unscientific landfills and also extract value from the waste.
But this would require adequate planning and adopting waste management solutions that suits
the socio-economic and geographical profile of the urban areas is particularly important. So,
this present study has taken a small step towards that end. Worldwide few Metropolitan city
corporations have successfully used the potential of the private sectors for leveraging the
solid waste management service efficiency. But as discussed above this alternative thinking is
yet to gain its momentum in the developing nations of South East Asia. The government and
other stakeholders need to come together to address this gap to allow for informed decision
making.