Journalism of Courage
The National Solid Waste Association of India (NSWAI) has proposed a German technology which will help prevent dumping ground fires like the one at Mumbai’s Deonar last month, and also convert the garbage into fuel, compost or recycled material.
NSWAI, which will open a centre dedicated to solid waste management called ENVIS (Environmental Information System), has also criticised the ‘solution’ adopted by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to avoid such fires in future.
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“The municipal commissioner has decided to spread construction and demolition debris on top of the waste dump with the idea that it would prevent escape of methane and thus avoid fires. This is just impossible and illegal. The very fact that methane is getting generated means the dump contains biodegradable waste which can be processed,” said Amiya Kumar Sahu, President, NSWAI.
The organisation, instead, proposed a German technology that has also been used in Egypt and Israel, which would help get rid of the existing dumping ground mountains and prevent them from being formed in future.
“There are German made machines which sort, shred and segregate the garbage and make it useful either as fuel, fertiliser or recycled material. Using appropriate numbers of these machines, the whole lump-even as big as Deonar-can be removed in about five years and land under it can actually be made available for development,” said Milind Chitale of MarsChem Group, Mumbai, who is a member of NSWAI.
