At the Bharat Recycling Show 2026, R. Keerthana sat down with Shri Kiran Dighavkar for a conversation on Mumbai's waste management challenges, the Deonar biomining and waste-to-energy projects, the new construction-and-demolition (C&D) waste portal, user-fee models, and the lessons Dharavi's COVID response holds for waste management today. Here is an excerpt from the fireside chat.

Mumbai generates close to 7,000 metric tonnes of waste every day and has been trying to move away from landfill dependence for years. Honestly, what needs to change most urgently: segregation at source, processing capacity, the economics, or consumer behaviour?

Kiran Dighavkar: Let me correct the framing slightly. Mumbai collects about 7,000 tonnes a day at our processing and disposal sites; that's before accounting for what goes to the unorganised recycling sector, informal recyclers in places like Dharavi, and private recyclers. Beyond that, there's construction and demolition (C&D) waste, which is almost as big a stream (about 8,500 tonnes a day) plus tree waste and silt. In all, roughly 90% of the city's garbage is collected by BMC and taken to processing sites or landfills.

To actually change things, I'd split the answer in two parts. First: We need to look at waste as a resource, specifically through waste-to-energy. There are two kinds: energy from dry waste, which can generate electricity, and energy from wet waste, which produces compressed biogas (CBG). Second: This is the real crux. Solid waste management is not inherently profitable, so it always needs some form of viability-gap funding. Unlike, say, real estate, where demand and supply alone drive activity, nobody needs to be persuaded to build waste infrastructure the same way they're persuaded to build housing. Unless we build in an element of profit or commercial value, it remains a herculean task for any urban local body.

Let's talk about Deonar. The recent approval allows biomining of up to 15,000 metric tonnes a day. A staggering number. What are the biggest challenges the project faces?

Dighavkar: To put the scale in context: roughly 20 million tonnes of legacy waste has accumulated at Deonar since the land was handed to BMC by the state government in 1926. Of that, about 7.8 million tonnes has already been biomined. A similar effort is underway at Gorai, where around 2 million tonnes has been deposited.

Land scarcity is really what's forcing this shift, we simply can't afford to keep this land locked up purely for dumping. Biomining at Mulund is now about 90% complete, and we're roughly six months from clearing the landfill entirely. At Deonar, we're aiming to clear around 123 hectares over the next three years; we've received consent to operate and are awaiting High Court permission before scaling up to the 15,000-tonnes-a-day figure.

The challenges fall into two broad categories. From 1926 through the 1970s and '80s, plastic in waste terms wasn't really a factor, so most legacy waste decomposed or was relatively easy to handle. Plastic inflow accelerated sharply from the 1980s onward, especially after 2000, and that's now one of the biggest challenges in the excavated material: plastic has to be separated out, then either recycled or sent to cement kilns as fuel, while the remaining soil and debris goes to backfilling. Segregating legacy waste is a very different and harder problem than segregating fresh waste.

The waste-to-energy plant is expected to process around 600 tonnes of fresh waste a day and put electricity back on the grid. What will determine whether this becomes a genuine part of Mumbai's circular economy, rather than just another disposal method?

Dighavkar: This is a pioneering initiative for us. Our first attempt at waste-to-energy in Mumbai. We started small, at 600 tonnes a day, because five or six years ago, when the project was conceived, very few players in the market could actually process waste into electricity at scale. I'm happy to share that the plant will be inaugurated around Christmas, and the electricity generated will go straight back into the grid for the city to use.

Looking ahead, of the roughly 7,000 tonnes we receive daily, we hope to eventually route around 5,000 tonnes a day through waste-to-energy, generating close to 100 MW of electricity. This is just the start.

BMC also launched a C&D waste portal recently. How significant is C&D waste as a share of Mumbai's overall waste challenge, and where's the biggest opportunity to recover concrete aggregate, bricks, metals?

Dighavkar: I'd frame C&D waste differently from municipal solid waste. You've probably read about Mumbai's air quality and dust pollution, or seen reports of mangroves and marshland being damaged by dumped debris, that's C&D waste. We faced an almost identical problem with garbage 20–25 years ago, before we had processing sites, and that waste ended up polluting the city. The same pattern is repeating with C&D waste today, simply because you cannot build a new structure in a city like Mumbai without demolishing an old one first, or without excavating for basements and underground parking. Interior work, infrastructure projects…all of it generates excavation and demolition waste.

If we don't manage this well, we'll keep damaging mangroves, marshland and the wider urban ecosystem. Fortunately, the central government has stepped in with the C&D Waste Management Rules, 2025, which introduce Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for C&D waste, requiring bulk generators to process their waste, with at least 20% mandated for reuse. BMC's goal with the new portal is to track every kilogram of debris through a vehicle-tracking system: from where it's generated, to where it's processed, to where it's reused. Within a year, I expect the entire C&D waste stream in the city to be trackable.

Can you explain how the portal actually works?

Dighavkar: The portal is essentially a monitoring tool for the entire C&D waste journey, from generation to processing. It allows registration by citizens, builders and developers, as well as recipients of the waste, that is, recyclers, and increasingly, private players setting up their own recycling plants, which BMC is actively encouraging.

Previously, developers had to submit a waste management plan and declare where debris would be deposited, but we received frequent complaints that this wasn't always followed through. The portal closes that gap by tracking the process end-to-end, and it also helps developers formally claim their EPR compliance. Interestingly, the portal also covers stone crushers, since excavation often turns up rock that can be recycled, and low-lying areas that need backfilling material can register too. The registration is currently voluntary, while it will become compulsory in the coming days.

There's growing pressure on municipalities to make waste management financially sustainable, and BMC has proposed user fees for solid waste management. How do you make a user-fee system work while also pushing bulk generators to segregate and process responsibly?

Dighavkar: The central government's "polluter pays" principle makes this fairly straightforward in policy terms: whoever generates the waste is responsible for the cost of processing it. Under the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026, all bulk waste generators, including housing societies producing over 100 kg of waste, have to either process their own waste or pay a processing fee.

BMC's scheme works both ways: housing societies that process their waste on-site get a property tax rebate of up to 15%; those that don't are charged a processing fee. We've applied similar logic in informal settlements through what we're calling the Swachh Mumbai Prabodhan Yojana, where waste collectors are provided to every household, and residents pay a nominal ₹50 a month per house. The point isn't primarily revenue, it's responsibility. Once you're paying for something, you start to feel ownership of the outcome.

Mumbai's waste stream itself is shifting… more packaging, more plastic, more multilayer material nobody quite knows how to handle. How is BMC pushing material recovery through MRFs (material recovery facilities) to keep recyclables out of landfills?

Dighavkar: This comes back to what I said earlier: unless waste has a monetary value attached, progress stalls. Mumbai's development plan sets aside 96 plots for material recovery facilities. Unless we collect dry waste effectively, recycle it and feed it back into the recycling stream, we can't extract value from it. And waste-to-energy plants themselves run on dry waste as feedstock. Government support, through CSR or direct funding, is needed to get these MRFs modernised initially; the central government has, in fact, already started funding MRF modernisation. BMC's plan is to modernise all 96 plots as commercial hubs for collecting and recycling dry waste, creating jobs in the process, alongside genuine value from the waste itself.

You led a 4T model (Tracing, Tracking, Testing, Treating) in Dharavi during the COVID 19 pandemic, managing one of the most densely populated places in India. Is there a version of that model for waste management?

Dighavkar: Absolutely, I think everything is connected. For context: I was posted in Dharavi during COVID 19, and the way the outbreak was managed there was recognised by the World Health Organisation and internationally. I even wrote a book about the model. The secret to it was community engagement, taking people into confidence and working closely with NGOs. There's a common misconception that managing a crisis is solely the government's responsibility, but nothing succeeds without people's involvement.

The same applies to waste. It was all about community engagement. It's fundamentally a two-way process: BMC can appeal to citizens to segregate, and we can penalise repeat offenders, but without genuine awareness and behavioural change among people, solid waste management simply cannot succeed.

What's the biggest lesson from that experience that you're applying to waste management now?

Dighavkar: We've already started applying it, for instance, with the newly introduced "sanitary waste" category (sanitary pads, napkins, adult diapers, pet waste), which now needs to be segregated separately from dry and wet waste. Unless people are educated and made aware, this simply won't work. So we're leaning on NGOs and community-based organisations, the same way we did in Dharavi, and we're inviting resident associations and community groups to get involved.

Rapid Fire Questions 

Deonar or Dharavi, which was the toughest challenge? Dharavi was about crisis management. It was unexpected, but we rose to the occasion and delivered. Waste management, by contrast, is a long-term, age-old problem. Deonar is the most challenging.

One phrase Mumbaikars should stop saying about waste collection? "Let the BMC segregate" or "let the municipality segregate." People need to see waste as their own responsibility, and as a resource.

Segregation at source: citizen problem or system problem? Partly both, but more of a citizen problem. We've offered property tax rebates, run awareness campaigns, and worked with recycling groups to show how waste can be converted into value, but citizen enthusiasm for actually processing waste still lags.

If you had an unlimited budget, what would you build tomorrow? More waste-to-energy capacity, to the point where plant operators are going door-to-door looking for feedstock, rather than the other way around.

On a lighter note, another dream: the way the Prime Minister once announced demonetisation on TV overnight, I'd love to see a similar overnight decree banning gutka and spitting on the streets. That itself would change the city.

Fifteen years from now, is Mumbai's waste problem solved, or still a work in progress? Definitely, solved. Landfills will be converted into green zones or waste-processing sites. In fact, within 5–10 years, I expect to see electricity and compressed biogas being generated from waste at real scale, with most of today's problems resolved.