Environmentalist seeks to convert garbage into power

JALANDHAR, June 15: With the dream of making Jalandhar a garbage free city lying at the core of his heart, Sangat Singh, a local environment...

JALANDHAR, June 15: With the dream of making Jalandhar a garbage free city lying at the core of his heart, Sangat Singh, a local environmentalist, has been struggling to make his voice heard in the quagmire of bureaucrats and politicians.

Sangat says that collecting garbage in a systematic manner would lead to a pollution free environment and give several benefits like power generation from the trash. Jalandhar city could produce 1.25 lakh units of electricity daily from the 300-400 tons of pure organic compost, he says.

Singh8217;s formula is simplistic, as he says that dung collected from a single animal in a day was capable of producing four units of electricity. He claims that the project could yield Rs 10 crore annually to Jalandhar Municipal Corporation in net profits.

Sangat Singh claims that the project could be applied at the city, state and also at the national-level. He claimed that income worth Rs 1,000 crore could be generated through energy generation from the garbage, as the state was producing an approximate 50,000 tonnes of organic manure daily.

He said that while this project would generate power, farmers would get natural fertilizer, as dumping of compost in the fields would enrich the soil. He claims that the corporation can recover the initial cost of about Rs 5 crore on the project within two years.

Sangat envisages door to door collection of garbage, separating organic wastes from the decomposable content, dumping it in fields and setting up of biogas plants for producing elecricity. His dream is to have no garbage dumping grounds after the completion of the project, as there would be no garbage left. However, in spite of assurances by Secretary, Local Bodies Punjab, N. K. Arora and some officials of the local corporation, his plans are yet to take practical shape.