Integrated Solid Waste Management in Vashi, Navi Mumbai.

Vashi's centre mixes almost every kind of generator in a few sectors (markets, malls, hospitals, offices and housing) and each sends out waste the rules treat differently: spoiled produce, shop packaging, clinical waste, e-waste from offices, and dry recyclables from homes. When streams mix, a recyclable load becomes a disposal cost and a clinical bag becomes a violation. We sort out which rules bind each establishment, set up separate storage, and contract authorised collectors, so each stream leaves with its own paper trail.

Vashi was the first CIDCO node to be settled, at the Navi Mumbai end of the road bridge over Thane Creek, and it is still the city's busiest centre. Its sectors hold low-rise CIDCO housing put up in the seventies and eighties, much of it now due for rebuilding, alongside newer towers, malls, hospitals and the offices clustered around the railway station. The APMC wholesale markets, which moved here from south Mumbai in stages, trade produce, grain, spices and flowers for the whole region every night. Mangroves line the creek on its western side. Half a century on, Vashi is being rebuilt from within.