7.4 million tonnes of legacy waste removed from landfills at record pace in last year: Ashish Sood

Delhi's biomining project removed 7.4 million tonnes of waste in 2025-26, significantly outpacing previous years, despite ongoing challenges with fresh waste.

Urban development minister Ashish Sood, who presented a detailed review of Delhi’s landfill remediation efforts during the national review meeting of Swachh Bharat Mission, claimed that the biomining project in Delhi has achieved record pace over the last one year with 7.4 million tonnes of legacy waste being cleared in April 2025- February 2026.

According to the data submitted by the urban development ministry to the Centre, around 2.99 million tonnes of waste was removed in 2024-25, 5.4 million tonnes in 2023-24 and just 2.19 million tonnes in 2022-23. (HT Archive)

Comparatively, according to the data submitted by the urban development ministry to the Centre, around 2.99 million tonnes of waste was removed in 2024-25, 5.4 million tonnes in 2023-24 and just 2.19 million tonnes in 2022-23.

Similarly, the daily average biomining has now reached 20,000 tonnes per day (TPD) in comparison to 8,000 TPD, 15,000 TPD, and 6,000 TPD in the preceding three years, respectively. The national level review was held at Vigyan Bhavan under the chairmanship of union minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs

Sood said, “A four-year comparative reveals that both total annual biomining volumes and average daily processing rates were significantly lower in all preceding years compared to the record-breaking scale achieved this year.” Biomining is a process of separating various components of legacy waste such as plastic, paper, cloth, sand, and bricks by passing them through trommel machines, which act as cylindrical rotating sieves.

To be sure, the biomining of three landfill sites in Delhi has been marred by delays and multiple deadline revisions. The project was started on the orders of National Green Tribunal (NGT) dated July 17, 2019 whereby all three erstwhile civic bodies were directed to start the bio-mining and bio-remediation of old dump waste sites to reclaim the land within one year with substantial progress within six months. Dumping of mixed fresh waste at the oversaturated landfill sites has proved to a major hurdle--resulting in net slow down of waste removal.

As per the data released by the government, while 7.4 million tonnes of waste was removed in last year another 3.07 million tonnes of fresh waste was dumped during the period. In 2024-25, 2.9 million tonnes of waste was removed while 2.86 million tonnes of fresh waste was added leading to minimal net progress. Similarly, 2.3 million tonnes and 1.56 million tonnes of fresh garbage was added to the three sites in the preceding two years. When the project was started 28 lakh tonnes of legacy waste was present on the three sites and even though 25.5 million tonnes of waste has been biomined, the data shows that 11.5 million tonnes of garbage is still lying at the three sites currently.

Sood said reclamation of nearly 75 acres of land has been achieved and plans are already in motion to tackle the issue of fresh waste. “Delhi government is establishing five new Integrated fresh waste processing facilities with a combined capacity of 5,900 metric tonnes per day at Okhla, Bhalswa, Shinghola, Narela-Bawana and Ghazipur on reclaimed landfill land. These facilities are targeted for commissioning by October 2, 2026,” he added.