Over 2mn tonnes of legacy waste cleared in 4 months, says LG’s office

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has stepped up the pace of its “bio-mining project” to clear three landfill sites in the national capital, the office of Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena said on Wednesday

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has stepped up the pace of its “bio-mining project” to clear three landfill sites in the national capital, the office of Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena said on Wednesday.

New Delhi, India - Sept. 11, 2020: A newly inaugurated trommel machine at work inside the dump yard, at Ghazipur, in New Delhi, India, on Friday, September 10, 2020. The garbage accumulation is said to have gone down by 40ft in a year after the East Delhi Municipal Corporation began using trommel machine-cum-ballistic separators to treat the garbage. (Photo by Raj K Raj/ Hindustan Times) (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

Bio-mining separates various components of legacy waste such as plastic, paper, cloth, sand and bricks by passing them through a trammel screening machine.

The LG’s office said 26.1 lakh tonne of legacy waste was cleared over the last four months, since Saxena took over, with a monthly processing rate of 6.5 lakh tonne. The three landfill sites – Okhla, Bhalswa and Ghazipur – had about 280 lakh tonne of legacy waste in mid-2019, when bio-mining was started as per orders of the National Green Tribunal. Three erstwhile municipal corporations in Delhi managed to reduce the original legacy waste to around 229.1 lakh tonne by May 2022, and it stood at 203 lakh tonne at the end of September this year, according to official records.

To be sure, for the landfill sites to be cleared, the municipal corporations will not only need to focus on the legacy waste but also find a solution to the dumping of fresh waste at the three sites. In August, HT had reported that based on the average work rate so far, Delhi’s garbage mountains may take up to 197 years to clear at current pace.

While the trommel machine deployed by MCD clear the legacy waste, all three landfill sites remain currently active and continue to receive fresh waste.

In an official statement, the LG’s office said the disposal of legacy waste from the three sites between June and September this year “increased by 462%” as compared to the corresponding period in the preceding three years. “The total legacy waste at the three landfill sites that stood at 280 lakh MT in mid-2019, came down to 229.1 lakh MT in May, 2022, with total disposal of 50.9 lakh MT in three years at the rate of 1.41 lakh MT per month,” the LG’s office said.

A senior official from the LG secretariat said that Saxena has visited the landfill sites on several occasions and the secretariat has since been monitoring the progress on a daily basis. “The LG had asked MCD to come up with a concrete plan of action for razing these mounds within 18 months after his first visit to Ghazipur and several steps have been taken to increase the pace of the project,” the official said, asking not to be named.

The LG secretariat has listed several steps that have been taken to increase the pace of the project including repair of trommel machines and increasing their count. “50 more trommelling machines, tendering for which is in the final stages, will also be deployed soon,” the official said.