Contextualising household waste segregation in India’s small cities: a multi-stakeholder qualitative study

Introduction Household waste segregation is a central pillar of sustainable urban waste management, yet its everyday implementation in small cities in a low- to middle-income country like India remains uneven despite clear policy mandates and widespread awareness. This qualitative study examined how waste segregation is organised, negotiated, and stabilised in practice across three small cities in the country: Datia (Madhya Pradesh), Deoria (Uttar Pradesh), and Balasore (Odisha), selected to reflect diverse socio-cultural and infrastructural contexts. Methods Using an interpretive approach inspired by phenomenological design, 24 focus group discussions and 12 in-depth interviews were conducted with community residents and sanitation service providers. Data were audio-recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed in MAXQDA using a reflexive approach. Results Five interrelated themes emerged, capturing how segregation practices were shaped by the temporal rhythms of daily life, lived material infrastructures, social logics and informal value systems, frontline sanitation workers’ mediation, and flows of institutional legitimacy. Rather than functioning as a stable household behaviour, segregation emerged as a situational accomplishment, continuously negotiated at the interface of household routines, collection practices, and governance arrangements. City-level contrasts revealed that clearer procedural design, women-led frontline engagement, and sustained mediation supported more stable practices in Balasore, while procedural ambiguity and uneven service signals in Datia and Deoria contributed to conditional and symbolic compliance. Discussion The findings demonstrated that persistent gaps between policy intent and everyday practice arise less from deficits in awareness and more from misalignments between service design and lived realities. The study underscores the limitations of standardised, metro-derived, technology-intensive waste management models and highlights the need for small-city policies that align service delivery with everyday routines, recognise informal waste practices, strengthen frontline mediation, and build institutional legitimacy through visible and credible waste flows.