India formulates mandatory urban solid waste use policy to make highway construction sustainable, reduce cost by a tenth

New Delhi: New policy guidelines on using solid waste for building highways make it compulsory for road builders such as the National Highways Authority of India to issue tenders for urban solid waste supply by municipalities.

This tender is to be issued before construction begins, with the waste to be used to build embankments, according to the guidelines finalized by the ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH).

An embankment refers to a volume of earthen material that is placed and compacted for the purpose of raising the grade of a roadway above the level of the existing surrounding surface. This normally uses soil from private land closest to a highway project.

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Using municipal waste instead of soil from agricultural fields is expected to reduce highway construction costs by about 10%. Besides, it will also fast track construction projects, as there will be no need for obtaining environment clearance.

Mint first wrote on the policy being finalized in January, 2024

The guidelines are first among various other measures MoRTH is planning in order to make highway construction sustainable. The ministry will also shortly come out with policies on use of industrial waste, plastic waste and steel slag in highway construction.

Mandated to use waste

According to the guidelines seen by Mint, public sector builders agencies such as NHAI as well as private sector entities would be mandated to use processed inorganic solid waste (inert material or soil generated from processing and bio-mining of solid waste) in building embankments for all upcoming and under construction and DPR stage highway and road projects.

For use of the material, building agencies would also be mandated to use the Gati Shakti portal to identify solid waste processing sites earmarked under the Swatch Bharat Mission (Urban) 2.0 and enter into an MoU with municipalities closest to highway sites for supplies. 

The cost of this material would be built into the highway project which would be 10% less than the cost of soil sourced from private land for building embankments.

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“The rate for providing inert material will be 10% less than the rate of earth corresponding to component of compensation of earth taken from private land prevailing at the time of payment. Municipal Corporation shall be fully responsible for loading and unloading of inert material at its own cost. The role of NHAI/MoRTH shall be limited to bear the cost of inert material equivalent to replaced good earth. This would be directly paid by Contractor to local body,” the policy states.

The policy further provides that if processed solid waste is not available at certain places, highway contractors would be allowed to set up such facilities in consultation with urban local bodies (ULB) using advance from MoRTH. But this would be done in exceptional cases and largely municipalities would be asked to expand processing of solid waste.

MoRTH has already asked state governments to promote use inert materials in construction of state roads while also encourage municipal bodies to expedite setting up of facilities for bio-mining of municipal solid waste using funds available for such exercise from Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

“Extracting large quantities of soil for highway construction requires licences and many times royalty payment. Use of processed inorganic solid waste in highway construction will be a great facilitator. …it is an environment friendly decision which will have a positive impact in the short, medium and long term,” said Kushal Kumar Singh, Partner, Deloitte India.

Accumulated waste

India has approximately 170 million tonnes of waste already accumulated across 2,304 dump sites. As per a government assessment, around 10,000 hectares of land is locked in dump sites. Due to limited land availability, these landfills are on the verge of reaching maximum capacity and pose serious environmental and health hazards.

“Mandating the use of solid waste from urban landfills is one more push towards reducing the use of virgin raw materials from natural sources in Highway construction. Combined with the other environment friendly initiatives undertaken over the past decade - use of fly ash from thermal power plants, waste plastic in bituminous roads, and recycling of milled road surface, among others - this initiative too shall gradually reduce our dependency on borrow earth from agricultural lands,” said Jagannarayan Padmanabhan, senior director & global head, transport, mobility and logistics, CRISIL Market Intelligence and Analytics.

“The only uncertainty left to see is the cost of mobilizing scalable equipment at landfills which can step up the waste processing necessary for the volumes needed in embankment soil,” he added.

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Shashwat Kumar, partner IndusLaw, said : “Technique intend to be used for obtaining inert soil is bio-mining which is not expensive. This compared to the cost and opportunity cost of use of agricultural soul is substantially low. In my opinion, this initiative is unlikely to impose any increased financial burden on the development of highways or even complexities and, on the contrary, will result in lowering costs required for development of highways.”

MoRTH’s initiative is aimed at providing a viable and economic alternative for use of solid waste and lessen the pressure on municipalities to look for more land to dump the waste. The policy is based on MoRTH’s exercise undertaken through NHAI under which two pilot projects for utilization of Inert Material which is one of the major components of municipal solid waste, were undertaken. The first pilot project was carried out in Delhi-NCR on Urban Extension road and DND Sohna spur of Delhi-Mumbai Expressway. In 2nd pilot project, Inert Solid Waste material has been used on Ahmedabad-Dholera Expressway. In both the cases, construction of embankment was successfully carried out as per laid down procedure with strict quality control using the inert material.

Under Swatch Bharat Mission Urban 2.0 (SBM2.0) of Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MOHUA), funds are provided to local bodies to take up processing of Urban solid waste. Keeping in view principles of Gati Shakti, it has now been decided to dovetail Highways construction with SBM2.0.