PRESENT AND FUTURE-STATUS OF SYSTEM WASTE - A NATIONAL-LEVEL DELPHI IN INDIA

To focus explicitly on waste and its reduction, a concept of system wa ste has been developed and reported in the literature. In this paper a n attempt has been made to categorize system waste at aggregate levels and to learn about the current and future status of system waste in v arious sectors in India. System waste, which is defined as ''any unnec essary input to and/or any undesirable output from any system,'' is co mplex, multifaceted, subjective, and not generally clearly understood. Its study is a fit case for the use of qualitative group problem-solv ing techniques. Delphi is one of the techniques that can be used in su ch cases. A two-round Delphi study on system waste and waste managemen t practices was conducted in 1990 at the national level in India in wh ich participants from eight sectors of the Indian economy were include d. The paper describes the study and its results.