Effective solid waste management (SWM) is an important pillar of urban economic sustainability and resource efficiency. This study evaluates household waste segregation and recycling practices within the framework of India’s national Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBM) program. Utilizing primary survey data from 600 households in urban and peri-urban locations, the research investigates the disconnect between high public awareness and low rates of actual segregation behaviour. Through a descriptive-analytical framework, the study identifies socio-economic barriers, including lack of infrastructural incentives and perceived low economic value of waste, that hinder the transition to a circular economy at the household level. The findings provide evidence-based policy recommendations for municipal authorities to optimize resource recovery and reduce the financial burden of waste disposal through targeted economic incentives and improved source-segregation logistics.

© The Author(s) 2026. Published by RITHA Publishing. This article is distributed under the terms of the license CC-BY 4.0., which permits any further distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited maintaining attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and URL DOI.

Article’s history: Received 21st of January, 2026; Revised 7th of February, 2026; Accepted for publication 25th of February, 2026; Available online: 10th of March, 2026; Published as research article in Volume III, Issue 3.

Vairamani, S. & Rajesh, K (2026). Urban Waste Management: An Empirical Assessment of Household Recycling Behaviours under National Program Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Journal of Global Sustainability and Development, Volume III, Issue 3, 23-39. https://doi.org/10.57017/jgsd.v3.i3.02

CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement: S. Vairamani: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Supervision. K. Rajesh: Investigation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Validation.

Acknowledgments: N/A

Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Data Availability Statement: The data that support the findings of this study were sourced from World Bank, World Development Indicators, with the dataset spans 2000 to 2024.

Ethical Approval Statement: Ethical approval was waived by WDI (where the data was sourced from) due to the use of anonymised secondary data and the retrospective nature of the study.