98% processed is 100% lie: Investigating Gurugram’s broken waste system

On paper, Gurugram processes 98 percent of its waste. On the ground, that number dissolves into a mirage.

On July 18, the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) posted proud images of six geotagged “cleaned” locations on X as part of their cleanliness campaign. The images captured freshly cleared stretches, concrete paths flanked by empty carts, neatly stacked waste supposedly whisked away.

When Newslaundry revisited these locations on two different days in July and October, the picture had changed. Five were already buried under new piles of garbage. Only one spot seemed truly clean, and even there, barely 500 metres away, a fresh mound of waste had begun to rise. 

Digital campaigns can’t disguise a broken system. Gurugram spends Rs 45 crore a year on waste management, yet manages little more than relocation – shifting garbage until someone else’s air, water, or forest pays the price. 

It’s every step that’s broken

Gurugram, Haryana’s second-largest city, stretches over 232 square kilometres divided into 35 wards and four zones. Zones 1 and 2 – Old Gurugram – are cramped, unplanned, densely populated. Zones 3 and 4 – New Gurugram – glimmer with malls, high-rises, and corporate offices. Together, these zones generate roughly 1,200 tonnes of waste every day: 354.83 tonnes in Zone 1, 333.52 in Zone 2, 312.62 in Zone 3, and 199.03 in Zone 4. For a city whose population was estimated to be around 26 lakh as per a 2022 estimate.

Each zone is supposed to follow a multi-layered waste management mechanism, with the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram as the nodal agency for collection, segregation, and processing. Gurugram’s process derives from the national Solid Waste Management Rules 2016, with additional operational details codified in its own municipal bylaws – both of which align closely with the guidelines and objectives of the Swachh Bharat Mission.

The first step in this waste management machinery is door-to-door collection, with segregation at source: wet, dry and hazardous waste in separate bins. This is rarely followed. However, the Swachh Bharat Mission municipal solid waste management manual states that if unsegregated waste has not been sorted at the primary level, or at the door-to-door collective level, then it should be segregated “either at an intermediate stage or at the processing plant”.

Waste collected from these homes is then moved to primary collection points, which are meant to consolidate and temporarily store waste before transporting it to secondary collection points. Secondary collection points are meant to be the logistical bridge between primary collection and processing or landfill sites. They’re designed to segregate and aggregate waste, with composting facilities. 

The MCG lists 14 secondary collection points across four zones. Newslaundry visited at least one in each zone and found they were functioning in violation of norms. 

Additionally, the 2023 environment district plan by the Haryana State Pollution Control Board had listed 20 such points, but only two of them continue to be in the 2025 list shared with Newslaundry by MCG officials. That should have meant the remaining 18 ceased to exist. However, Newslaundry visited five of those and found four of them existing as dumps.

The next layer should be Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs). As per MCG, five exist. Newslaundry visited four and found them either locked, defunct, or functioning as open dumps.

The result? A rising number of unofficial garbage dumps across Gurugram, and the aggregation of unsegregated waste at the Bandhwari landfill on the Gurugram-Faridabad highway near the ecologically sensitive Aravalli forests.

A statistical illusion

In the 2024–25 Swachh Survekshan rankings, Gurugram claimed a leap from 140th nationally to 41st, earning the title of Haryana’s seventh-cleanest city. Though the numbers tell a paradoxical story. 

Over three years, door-to-door collection dropped from 98 percent in 2022-23 to just 59 percent in 2024-25. Segregation fared even worse, plunging from 97 percent to a mere 10 percent over the same period. Yet the processing rate has surged from 59 percent to 98 percent. (More data on Dataful here.)

Dr Arun Kumar, Program Manager at Envirocatalysts, cut through the fog. “The city’s claim of processing 98 percent of waste is misleading when nearly half of it never even enters the formal collection system. What happens to the rest? Without complete collection and segregation, the idea of near-total processing becomes a statistical illusion rather than an operational reality.”

If nearly all the waste is being processed, how can over 200 unauthorised dumping points operate daily? And how can a city with barely functional waste-processing infrastructure claim to process almost everything it produces? 

The answer is in Gurugram’s streets.

At the first mile, no segregation. At the second, defunct sites

The Solid Waste Management Rules require door-to-door collection in at least three categories – wet, dry, and domestic hazardous – using compartmentalised and covered vehicles to prevent mixing.

Newslaundry found the opposite. For example, near each of the six geotagged “cleaned” sites mentioned by the MCG, carts and trolleys overflowed with mixed waste: food scraps and plastic bottles, medical waste and construction debris dumped together. Many vehicles moving this waste lacked compartments for segregation. 

At several primary collection points, there were no dustbins for segregated waste. For example, near the Shri Radha Krishna Mandir in Chakkarpur, residents said mixed waste was collected by the civic body. “MCG has given us a direction not to segregate the waste and collect the mixed waste as it is,” claimed local councillor Kunal Yadav.

That the primary collection points are not fulfilling their role of segregation is also clear from visits to secondary collection points, many of which serve as dumping zones for mixed garbage. None of these sites had machinery, segregation pits, or even basic containment.

The MCG lists 14 secondary collection points across Gurugram. Newslaundry visited five, at least one in each zone, and found chaos at every turn. These included Tulip Chowk in Zone 1, Daulatabad in Zone 2, Beriwala Bagh in Zone 3, and Kanhai in Zone 4.

At Kanhai in Zone 4, heaps of unsegregated garbage lay open, with cattle feeding on them. At Tulip Chowk in Zone 1, the site showed signs of prolonged waste accumulation, with stagnant, blackish and greenish water.

In Beriwala Bagh in Zone 3, Newslaundry found waste being dumped from a cart into an open dumping area with no segregation. Workers on the spot, who claimed to be informal workers, manually packed mixed waste into different bags to be sold to recyclers.

In Daulatabad in Zone 2, a vast stretch of land lay bare and exposed with heaps of mixed waste, including Diwali firecrackers. Two informal workers were busy segregating plastic waste by hand without any protective gear. They claimed the waste dumped is not segregated and the trucks that come for collection are not compartmentalised either. “Trucks arrive daily to dump waste here but only collect them once in a month,” said Amir*. 

The impact on such practices at secondary collection points is allegedly on their vicinity. Rajesh*, a farmer working a few meters away from the Daulatabad point, claimed it affected his crop. “My wheat cultivation also gets affected due to pollution and waste particles that often spread away from the point and settle on the wheat grain.”

The HSPCB 2023 plan had listed 20 collection points, most of which have now been erased from the updated 2025 list of 14 secondary collection points. Newslaundry visited five random locations among the delisted points: opposite Police Station Pataudi Road, near Sheetla Mata Mandir, near Union Bank Sector-18, Huda Market Sector-9, and Sector 12 Chowk. Out of five spots, we found only one to be clean. The remaining were still being used as open dumping grounds.

At the third mile, ghost facilities

As per the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban Advisory, a material recovery facility is infrastructure to receive, sort, process and store waste and inert materials, effectively reducing the waste load to be transported next.

In its action taken report to the National Green Tribunal in January 2024, the MCG had claimed five such facilities existed at Beriwala Bagh in Zone 1, Sector-44 in Zone 3, and in Badshahpur, opposite Paras Hospital, and at Atul Kataria Chowk in Zone 4. Officials at the MCG’s engineering wing provided the same list to Newslaundry when asked, except that Beriwala Bagh was now in Zone 3.

However, when Newslaundry visited four of these (Badshahpur could not be located), we found all of them either locked, defunct or functioning as open dumps.

Once Gurugram's largest processing site, the Beriwala Bagh MRF was inaugurated in 2022 to handle 150 tonnes per day under a private contractor. The board outside still calls it an MRF, but inside lies an open dump of mixed waste. During recent rainfall, the shield wall collapsed, and garbage seeped onto the road.

The one opposite Paras Hospital lies non-operational, filled with construction and demolition debris near the entrance.

The one at Atul Kataria Chowk sits in a forested patch filled with mixed waste. Construction for a new water tank was underway on the same land. The one in Sector-44 was locked.

Curiously, the 2023 HSPCB district plan had stated that the MCG had already constructed seven MRFs, including these five. 

Unauthorised dumps, impact on Aravallis, even Faridabad

With the processing chain broken, more than 200 sites reportedly operate like unofficial waste nodes across Gurugram. 

In several neighbourhoods, temporary carts and trolleys placed by the MCG have trained both residents and sanitation workers to treat these points as fair game for dumping. Once a cart stands somewhere, that spot becomes a magnet for garbage. Over time, what began as a temporary stop has hardened into a permanent mound, becoming the city’s de facto dumping grounds. 

It’s not just these sites that have mixed waste piling up.

Under the law, only residual inert waste – the leftover after all possible materials have been removed for recycling or recovery – from processing facilities can be sent to landfills. But because Gurugram's processing infrastructure has collapsed, mixed waste ends up at the Bandhwari landfill near the Aravallis too. 

Due to mixed waste being dumped daily, Bandhwari has become a significant source of uncontrolled leachate discharge, contaminating nearby forests, agricultural land, and water bodies, according to the National Green Tribunal (NGT). Significant amounts of unprocessed waste, known as “legacy waste,” continue to accumulate at the site, worsening air quality and groundwater contamination.

Every time it rains, the toxic leachate – rich in poisonous substances – seeps into the surrounding Aravalli forest areas. Over the last few years, government agencies including the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) have tested groundwater near the Bandhwari landfill and found high levels of iron, manganese, boron, calcium, chlorides, and nitrates far exceeding India's drinking water standards. 

Laboratory data dated February 9, 2022, from the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) had revealed the extent of contamination. 

In September 2024, environmental activist Vivek Kamboj and others filed an affidavit before the National Green Tribunal highlighting ongoing violations and environmental damage caused by the Bandhwari landfill in Gurugram. Despite multiple NGT orders since 2015, and repeated commitments by the MCG  and Municipal Corporation of Faridabad to clear legacy waste and stop leachate discharge, the affidavit claimed that the situation had only worsened.

Letters from the Divisional Wildlife Officer, Gurugram, dated May and August 2024, confirmed that forest areas and water bodies near Bandhwari had been contaminated with waste and leachate, posing risks to species such as leopards, jackals, and rusty-spotted cats.

A citizens’ report by environmental collective People for Aravallis documented nearly 50 geo-tagged sites where household waste, construction debris, and plastic refuse have been dumped across the Aravalli belt in Gurugram and Faridabad. 

To verify these findings, Newslaundry visited several of the listed sites along the Gurugram–Faridabad road. What we found mirrored the report’s claims: heaps of waste piled along both sides of the road, spilling into forest patches, with fresh loads of debris visible near the Bandhwari landfill and adjoining trails.

Stretching roughly 24 kilometres, the Gurugram–Faridabad Road (Rajesh Pilot Marg) cuts through the Aravalli forest belt, linking two of Haryana’s most rapidly urbanising districts. About 10 to 12 kilometres from Gurugram’s city centre, the road passes Bandhwari village, home to the landfill. The route, flanked by scrub forests and rocky hills, now doubles as an informal dumping corridor.

Neelam Ahluwalia, founder member of People for Aravallis, was unequivocal: "Aravallis need to be declared as a no-go area for waste dumping, burning, landfills, waste plants.”

Ecologist Ghazala Shahabuddin warned that toxic metals “get bio-accumulated in the plants and animals and get into the food chain, thereby poisoning the Aravalli landscape."

Dr Shyamala Mani, senior advisor at the Centre for Chronic Disease Control, called for urgent action. “The government must ensure the notification and implementation of Solid Waste Management Rules 2016 (segregation at source, composting/bio methanation of wet waste, recycling of dry waste, responsible processing of domestic hazardous waste, promoting reuse & reduce), Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Framework, Plastic Waste Management Rules 2018, E-Waste, Biomedical Waste, C&D Rules, Hazardous Waste Management in all the villages and municipalities of all the Aravalli districts. Focus must be on decentralised waste management, source segregation and maximum resource recovery.”

Landfills are also the world’s third-largest source of methane, after oil and gas systems and agriculture. In Haryana too, decomposing organic waste in landfills releases methane (CH₄), a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide over shorter time frames.

According to the HSPCB’s Emission Analysis Report, Haryana’s landfills emitted an estimated 33 kilotonnes of methane in 2019. Faridabad and Gurugram topped the list. The report noted that if left uncaptured, this methane escapes into the atmosphere, trapping heat and accelerating climate change, turning every neglected waste pile into a silent contributor to global warming.

Exporting the crisis

Gurugram’s mounting garbage problem and inefficient infrastructure has also created problems for Faridabad. On July 27 this year, a meeting of the Haryana Urban local bodies decided to stop taking Faridabad’s daily waste of 900 to 1,000 tonnes after September 30. Alternatively, Faridabad was asked to find a new location and manage its waste locally, restricting the Bandhwari landfill for the use of just Gurugram.

However, Ravinder Yadav, Additional Commissioner of Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, said that despite this, Faridabad has not yet stopped transporting its waste to Bandhwari as of October 28.

Since Gurugram’s own waste-to-energy plant has remained non-operational for months, the city’s waste now reportedly travels to Sonipat’s Murthal, where a 750 TPD facility tries to shoulder the load. The arrangement may not be without complications, partly due to the city’s broken waste system (again).

Arun Kumar said, “Inefficient waste handling in Gurugram, Sonipat, and at the Bandhwari landfill is silently worsening regional air quality in the NCR region…transporting waste long distances to Sonipat adds diesel emissions, while Bandhwari continues to leak methane and witness periodic fires. These activities together form an air pollution hotspot stretching from Gurugram to Faridabad and Sonipat and turning waste mismanagement into a year-round air quality crisis for NCR residents.”

Waste-to-energy in India is constrained by infrastructure: only 11 plants are currently operational, and another 10 are under construction, despite government estimates that the country has a potential capacity of 5 gigawatts, nearly 30 times what is installed today, Bloomberg reported.

A budget that doesn’t add up

Gurugram is among Haryana’s wealthiest municipalities but ranks 11th among the state’s 88 civic agencies when it comes to spending on waste management.

It spends over Rs 45 crore annually on waste management. Zone 1 has a budget of approximately Rs 16 crore, Zone 2 around Rs 15 crore, Zone 3 about Rs 16 crore, and Zone 4 another Rs 16 crore, including Rs 3 crore for door-to-door collection and transport. Citywide, about Rs 33 crore goes to road sweeping and Rs. 12 crore to waste collection and transport.

The HSPCB State Environment Plan 2025 refers to the Environment District Plan 2023, which states that Gurugram has achieved 100 percent waste collection and transportation but only 42 percent segregation. To bridge the gap, the HSPCB recommended investments in processing infrastructure, public-private partnerships and collaborations.

However, even after two years, Gurugram hasn’t been able to develop the necessary infrastructure to fill this gap. Despite spending a total of Rs 45 crore on waste management, no agency has been hired or allocated a budget for segregating, treating, or processing the waste. The city also has 20 active tenders related to waste handling, of which only six involve door-to-door collection and transportation. The rest cover sweeping.

“Spending money on waste segregation, sorting, and processing helps not only in the recovery of good-value resources through recycling and recovery but also addresses health and climate impacts,” said Suneel Pandey, PhD, Director, Circular Economy and Waste Management Division at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

Mathilde Rateri, a French expat who shifted to Gurugram from South Delhi, said, “Living here has made my and the expats’ life hell. We are losing our sanity because of the filth. Cleanliness should be a basic right for every citizen, yet here it feels like a privilege we do not have.”

The human cost

India’s Solid Waste Management Rules (2016) explicitly recognise waste pickers as integral to recycling and mandate their integration into municipal systems. This is for formal recycling aimed at a circular economy.

But in Gurugram, recycling actually runs on informal labourers who collect, sort, and sell waste to small scrap dealers without any medical or legal protection.

At Beriwala Bagh, a group of informal workers told Newslaundry they earn by separating and packaging waste for sale to recyclers. They have no fixed contracts, no protective gear, and no recognition from the MCG.

“I was lucky enough to find this glove in the heap of garbage today, otherwise we get a lot of cuts and injuries from segregating the waste daily with our bare hands,” said Rakesh*, a 45-year-old informal waste worker who had arrived in Gurugram two months back from Goalpara, Assam.

“If I were educated enough, I would have built my own recycling business and made things out of scrap,” said Jagdish*, 35.

The official response

In December last year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had expressed dissatisfaction with the MCG’s handling of the garbage crisis. It had also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 for “jugglery of statistics” and directed the appointment of nine advocates as local commissioners to inspect certain localities.

In July this year, the High Court issued a notice to the state government over a PIL alleging, among other things, that Gurugram continued to suffer from “an abysmal state of civic infrastructure and uncollected garbage”. 

Asked about gaps in the waste collection chain, Ravinder Yadav, Additional Commissioner of MCG, told Newslaundry, “There is no segregation happening at the secondary collection point, and they lack composting pits as well, so the waste is directly collected from home and dumped in these secondary collection points, and then waste is further collected from there and dumped in Bandhwari, without segregation.” 

Yadav confirmed mixed waste is being dumped at Bandhwari “as of now”. When asked when MCG was planning to treat the mixed waste in Bandhwari, he said, “a new tender will be floated for bioremediation of mixed waste, but there is no clear deadline for the same.”

Yadav confirmed that MRFs had been non-functional for two years and a “tender has been floated”. He said ragpickers will be integrated into the system when a new door-to-door agency is hired.

Vijay Choudhary, regional officer of Gurugram South, where many non-functional MRFs exist, said he was “not aware” of these facilities. He said they will look into the matter once the Newslaundry report is published. “We will send them (municipal officials) a notice…and penalise them.”

Newslaundry reached out to the HSPCB’s Gurugram South assistant executive engineer with a number listed on the board’s website. But the official who answered the call claimed he had been transferred to Palwal. 

Responding to queries about Faridabad’s waste at the Bandhwari landfill or in the Aravalli area, the Faridabad municipal corporation’s PRO denied the allegations. “MCF is following NGT guidelines and whoever is violating NGT norms, action is being taken against them.”

Gurugram district forest officer Raj Kumar said waste around the Aravallis along the Gurugram-Faridabad road had been cleared 15 days ago, after Newslaundry clarified that such dumping had last been noticed a week ago. “We have deployed staff to supervise that no one dumps the waste illegally and we have also put up warning boards,” he said. However, asked about fines, he disconnected the call.

R P Balwan, retired chief conservator of forests in Gurugram, said the waste problem was worsening due to “rapid urbanisation” and vehicles were “dumping at night when no one is watching”.

Calls to Swachh Bharat Mission director Binay Kumar Jha and deputy secretary Rajendra Singh Jayal remained unanswered.

Gurugram municipal corporation PRO Sandeep Rohila refused to comment on the issue. Calls to Gurugram zone 2 sanitation inspector Sandeep, zone 3 sanitation inspector Harsh Chawla, and zone 4 joint commissioner Ravindra Malik remained unanswered. 

Newslaundry has sent questionnaires to the MCG and HSPCB. This report will be updated if a response is received.

Names marked with asterisks have been changed to protect the identity of informal workers.

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