Nature of Solid Wastes and Its Management Problem in Burdwan Town, West Bengal

Abstract

Solid waste management poses crisis in many of the world's large urban areas due to explosive population growth and massive shift of population towards urban. Keeping in mind of the above problem a study has been done to find out the possible sources and the nature of solid wastes generated at different places of Burdwan town, West Bengal. Moreover, a questionnaire was made and was applied the same to the locality adjacent to the dumping centers. It was found that solid wastes mainly are polythene packets, plastic bottles, glass bottles, papers, coal ash, cottons, bandages, injection syringes, jute packets, needles, sands, torn cloths, torn mats, torn sacks, clay pots, scales of fish, rotten vegetable etc. The physicochemical parameter of the solid wastes viz. pH, phosphate, moisture, potassium, organic matter, organic carbon, nitrogen were assessed. The C/N ratio are 7.66-8.41; 0.029- 0.144,21.88-40.67; 0.54-0.67; 6.311-10.976; 3.406-7.011; 0.57 and 5.01-10.11 respectively. The pH of drinking water collected from different distance viz. (5 m, 10 m, 15 m, 20 m) from dumping centers does not show significant difference and ranged between 6.5-6.8.