Greater Noida to make compost out of green waste

Nearly 200 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste is generated daily in Greater Noida.

The Greater Noida authority has decided to make compost out of biodegradable waste at multiple locations across the city.

Garbage dumped on a roadside in Noida. (Sunil Ghosh/HT Photo)

The objective is to treat municipal solid waste at the point of generation in residential, commercial and industrial areas. The move will also reduce dependency on the 110-acre landfill site in Astoli village, where the authority is planning to set up a waste management plant for scientific disposal of municipal solid waste, officials said.

Greater Noida was carved out in 1992. However, municipal solid waste continues to be dumped in vacant areas across the town in the absence of a landfill site. Nearly 200 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste is generated daily in Greater Noida.

“We want to decentralise the process of waste treatment. It means we do not want to treat the bulk of solid waste at Astoli landfill site. We aim to collect the waste door-to-door at the primary collection point and then segregate it. We will set aside the biodegradable or the green waste and make compost of it at multiple locations,” said Debasish Panda, chief executive officer of the Greater Noida Noida authority.

The authority aims to provide compost making facilities in residential and industrial areas, where vacant plots are available.

“We will use the compost in our parks and other green areas. We will transport non-degradable waste that cannot be made into compost to our landfill site, where we aim to develop waste-to-energy plant. We will treat non-biodegradable waste at the landfill site,” said Panda.

The authority has decided to select a private agency that will be tasked with making compost out of biodegradable waste.

“We will soon select a private agency to set up systems at multiple locations to make compost out of green waste. We hope to select an agency in the next two to three months. Developing the Astoli landfill site will take a long time,” said Panda.

The authority aims to provide compost making facilities in the next six months so that it does not depend only on Astoli landfill site. “Setting up a waste-to-energy plant is a large-scale project that is time-consuming. Therefore, we will primarily focus on the setting up the composting project,” said Panda.