Hyderabad: The firecrackers have been burst, the festivities are over, and Hyderabad's streets are being swept clean. But while the visible remnants of Diwali disappear within days, the waste itself has a much longer journey.
For sanitation workers, the clean-up means additional shifts, heavier workloads and exposure to potentially hazardous materials. For the city's waste-management system, it raises a more complicated question: what happens to the tonnes of firecracker debris, discarded decorations and other festival waste collected from the streets?
Some material can be recovered and recycled. Much of it is mixed with regular municipal waste. But how much ultimately gets processed or ends up in a landfill remains difficult to establish.
Deputy Commissioner Srinivas, speaking about sanitation operations in LB Nagar, said clearing festival waste takes two to three days.
"It takes around two to three days to lift the whole waste because many people are not responsible," he said.
A sanitation worker described the process as repeated rounds of sweeping, with teams returning to areas where residents continue bursting crackers.
"We manage to clear around 80% of it. The remaining 20% is the regular dust that we collect the next day as part of our routine work," the worker said.
The workload, workers said, nearly doubles during the two days following Diwali.
Bharath of the Ramky Group, which handles waste-management operations in the area, estimated that around 20–25 tonnes of Diwali waste had been transported from LB Nagar.
"Two additional vehicles were deployed to manage the festival-related waste," he said.
He cautioned against using the area's figures to estimate waste generation across Hyderabad, given the differences between municipal zones.
The waste collected during the clean-up includes firecracker remnants, packaging and banana and mango leaves used in festive decorations.
Sanitation workers and waste collectors gather the refuse from streets and other accumulation points, including locations identified as Garbage Vulnerable Points, where rubbish is repeatedly dumped.
The collected waste is moved to secondary transfer stations, including one near the Hastinapuram ward office, where it is compacted before being transported onwards.
"The waste is compacted and again it goes to Jawaharnagar only," an official said.
For workers involved in the initial collection, that is often where their knowledge of the waste's journey ends.
One waste collector said some households segregate cardboard boxes during Diwali, while others throw them out with mixed garbage.
"We don't know much about what happens after that. The government takes over from there," she said.
Behind the clean streets are sanitation workers who say the festival adds considerably to their workload without increasing their wages.
"Not even one rupee extra. Even if we sweep additional areas or do more work, we aren't paid extra," a contract sanitation worker said.
The worker said the team had dwindled from seven members to four.
"Two have left, and one woman has died. We are now only four of us."
Their shift begins at 5.30 am and usually ends around 1.30 pm.
The worker also alleged that safety supplies, including gloves, footwear and soap, which are supposed to be provided every six months, had not arrived.
Monthly wages, the worker said, are around ₹15,000, while some colleagues receive ₹12,000.
Officials and a supervisor, however, maintained that workers use gloves and that safety kits had been distributed. The differing accounts raise questions about whether protective equipment reaches every worker regularly.
For household waste collectors, the risks extend beyond festival debris.
One collector, who said she has no fixed salary and earns approximately ₹100 per household, described the dangers of handling improperly discarded waste.
"Sometimes people throw broken glass garbage. Some senior citizens and patients use syringes."
"They sometimes dispose of needles in the waste. We have to be very careful while handling it," she said.
Environmental expert Narasimha Reddy Donthi said festival waste presents different challenges depending on the materials involved.
While bulk waste such as flowers can be segregated relatively easily, firecracker debris is more difficult to recover because of its mixed composition and scattered nature.
"Cracker waste includes different kinds of waste, not just one uniform material. It could be paper, it could be plastic, it could be chemicals," he said.
"They are in very small quantities volume-wise, so segregation at source is not possible."
The issue has acquired greater significance following the introduction of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026, which came into force on April 1.
The rules mandate segregation at source into four categories: wet, dry, sanitary and special-care waste.
"I think this is the first test for the Solid Waste Management Rules," Donthi said.
He questioned whether municipal authorities had adequately identified bulk waste generators, including large apartment complexes.
"If municipal corporations have not identified them, I think segregation will not happen at all," he said.
He warned that sweeping firecracker residues into the regular municipal waste stream could create environmental risks at disposal sites.
"All the waste goes to the landfill. That means all the chemical waste will go to the landfill, and they in turn might cause pollution there," he said.
Donthi identified phosphorus, ammonia and nitrates among the substances of concern, warning that residues could potentially contaminate landfill leachate and groundwater.
These are environmental risks that require investigation, rather than evidence of contamination caused by this year's Diwali waste.
"Cleaning is sweeping, collecting and disposing. They are not doing any processing," he said.
"These are chemicals. There is no processing. So that's a major lack."
He also highlighted the risks to sanitation workers handling partially burnt firecrackers, some of which could still be live.
"It's not just by giving gloves that safety is ensured. They need to be trained," he said.
While firecracker debris poses challenges, a significant portion of Diwali packaging and other dry waste could be recovered if households segregated it properly.
Roshan Miranda of Bintix, which collects segregated household dry waste, said the volume of material collected from households rises sharply during the festival.
Households that ordinarily generate one or two bags of dry waste a week may put out four or five during Diwali, he said.
"The biggest culprit is the segregation," Miranda said.
He explained that packaging containing minor traces of food could still be recycled if kept separate from other waste.
"It's okay if there's some residual food waste left over there. But if they were to keep it separate and give it to the waste pickers, it'll get 100% recycled."
Once materials are mixed with other waste, however, recovery becomes considerably more difficult.
According to Miranda, more than half of the mixed material handled in Bintix's experience may become unrecoverable. The estimate reflects the company's operations and is not a citywide recovery rate.
A representative of recycling company Banyan Nation described another part of the waste-recovery chain.
The company does not collect municipal waste directly. Instead, recyclable plastic reaches it after passing through several intermediaries, including waste pickers, kabadiwalas and scrap dealers.
"We come at the end. We collect this scrap, and we recycle, and we give it a new life," the representative said.
Material that becomes contaminated or mixed with other waste may never reach a recycling facility.
Much of Hyderabad's municipal waste is transported to the Jawaharnagar treatment and disposal facility, operated by Hyderabad Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Limited, associated with the Ramky Group.
The facility has infrastructure for composting, waste-to-energy generation and scientific landfilling.
But the existence of these facilities does not, by itself, establish how much of the waste arriving at Jawaharnagar is actually recovered or processed.
An audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, covering 2017–2022, found that mixed municipal waste continued to reach the facility despite claims of segregation.
The audit also identified a substantial shortfall in compost production. Against a projected compost yield of 25% of the organic waste considered suitable for composting, the actual yield was approximately 5.2%.
These findings relate to an earlier period and cannot be treated as a measure of the facility's performance in 2026. They nevertheless highlight longstanding problems with segregation and waste recovery.
Bharath said figures for the post-Diwali waste received at Jawaharnagar, including how much was processed and how much was landfilled, were still being compiled.
Without those figures, the outcome of this year's festival waste remains unclear.
Hyderabad's post-Diwali clean-up shows how quickly tonnes of waste can be removed from public spaces. But it also exposes gaps between collection, segregation, recovery and final disposal.
Sanitation workers describe heavier workloads and inadequate protection. Recyclers say valuable material becomes difficult to recover once mixed with other waste. Environmental experts warn of risks from chemical residues and inadequate segregation.
Meanwhile, the precise proportion of festival waste recycled, processed or landfilled remains unaccounted for in the information made available.
The city can measure how quickly its streets are cleared. The harder question is whether it can account for what happens to the waste afterwards.
Clean streets may signal the end of Diwali for residents. For the waste they leave behind, the journey is far from over.