After the 2018 ban by China on the import of foreign waste, the responsibility of waste processing has fallen back on governments and companies, leading to a shift from global outsourcing of waste to managing waste locally. The waste management approaches adopted at Mahakumbh 2025, the world’s largest spiritual fair held for forty-five days in India, can offer lessons on how domestic waste can be managed locally. The fair witnessed an unprecedented congregation of people, presenting critical challenges for sustainable waste management. It reportedly witnessed over 663 million people worldwide participate in the events, celebrations and meditations held on the banks of the Ganga River. For this purpose, a temporary “city” was set up on the riverbanks for nearly one and a half months, with housing facilities, hospitals, restaurants, eateries, transportation, business activities and hundreds of events. One of the biggest tasks in this unique gathering was to maintain the cleanliness and hygiene in the fairgrounds where millions of devotees and tourists arrived, stayed, lived and celebrated. Field visits, attendee reports, wide media coverage and news reports show that the area was mostly very clean despite the gatherings and events happening daily on such a large scale, from morning till night. This is a pioneer study that explores the waste management strategies and practices for managing the huge amount of solid waste generated at the Mahakumbh. Using an exploratory and inductive approach, the findings suggest that adopting a decentralized approach, providing more dignity and better wages for waste management work, hiring manpower, use of technology and multistakeholder collaboration helped manage the gigantic amount of domestic waste locally. The model of Mahakumbh 2025 can also offer valuable guidance to address waste management issues in large scale gatherings worldwide, from the Rio Carnival in Brazil to The Glastonbury Festival in the UK.
Pratistha Chandra (Tue,) studied this question.