Ranchi: More than five months after the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026, took effect on April 1, Ranchi’s four-bin segregation system is still largely missing on the ground. Residents and traders continue to hand over mixed waste, while garbage is routinely dumped on roads, footpaths and in market areas.The rules require waste to be segregated at source into four categories — wet, dry, sanitary and domestic hazardous. In Ranchi, these are meant to go into green, blue, red and black bins, respectively. Though green and blue bins can be seen in some residential and commercial areas, red and black bins remain rare, leaving little visible sign of the mandated four-way segregation during daily doorstep waste collection.Ritika, a shopper at Upper Bazar, said: “If segregation is mandatory, it should be reflected in how shops handle their daily waste. But garbage from different sources is still thrown together in the market, and the same waste ends up scattered along the roadside.”Deputy mayor Niraj Kumar said the problem was not confined to commercial establishments, as households also continued to hand over mixed waste.“Mixed waste is still being given from homes. Even after collection, waste is sometimes dumped together. Segregation has to happen at the source and continue through the collection process,” he said.Commercial establishments, meanwhile, find it difficult to sustain segregation in the absence of separate collection arrangements for different categories of waste.Ramesh, a shopkeeper in Upper Bazar, said: “We can keep separate bins for the waste generated in our shops, but if everything is eventually collected and dumped together, there is little clarity on how segregation is maintained beyond the shop.”The situation underlines the enforcement challenge facing the civic body. With the rules already in force, the task is to ensure segregation is implemented not merely in official guidelines, but at every stage — generation, collection, transportation and disposal — across all parts of the city.
