Mumbai, India

Famous for producing the glittery melodramas of Bollywood, Mumbai is a city that thrives on consumption and upward mobility. A creation of British imperialism, the city of Mumbai (previously known as Bombay) in the Indian state of Maharashtra is not only the center of one of the world's most prominent film industries but is also home to the Indian stock exchange and constitutes the financial heart of the region. The bulbous lights that curve along the Arabian Sea on Mumbai's Marine Drive reflect luxurious hotels and penthouses, but most city residents work for low pay and live in crowded and tenuous housing. Through the Oscar Award–winning 2009 film Slumdog Millionaire, people around the world got a taste of a dramatized slice of Mumbai life and the intense social inequalities that organize the city.

With a population of over 12 million people, central Mumbai occupies a 26-square-mile peninsula that juts out from India's western coast into the Arabian Sea. In comparison to Manhattan, which is around 22 square miles and home to just over 1.6 million people, the population density of Mumbai is more than six times greater. Including the metropolitan area, there are 22 million residents of Greater Mumbai, making it one of the most densely settled areas of the world. That Mumbai has developed on a small peninsula creates physical limits to expansion that do not exist in many other cities. This has created dramatic effects in the housing arena, including soaring real estate values and the development of sprawling, serpentine settlements like Dharavi, often called “Asia's biggest slum.” The scarcity of land has put limits on the availability of areas for dumping accumulated garbage within the city.

Since India began introducing legislation to broaden the financial sector and encourage foreign investment in the 1990s, the ability of residents of Mumbai (known as “Mumbaikers”) to consume has increased palpably. New retail stores have opened across the country, and the consuming classes have access to more goods and services than before, coupled with greater access to credit to purchase them. As a result, cars are choking city streets, and plastic bags are clogging city sewers. Grappling with an explosion of population and consumption, Mumbai faces many challenges in handling its increased production of waste. In just one decade, from 1991 to 2001, the amount of municipal waste swelled by around 50 percent, while the population increased by around 20 percent. As of 2010, the city produces approximately 6,500 tons of solid waste, along with [Page 571]2,500 tons of construction waste; over 10,000 tons of construction debris from flyovers (overpasses), road-widening, sewage and stormwater drains, and pipeline projects; and 8,000 kilograms of biomedical waste every day.

During the monsoon season in 2005, Mumbai officials reported that plastic bags and trash had blocked the aging storm drain infrastructure, intensifying flooding. The city is strongly motivated to modernize the city, starting with the waste management system.