Bio Mining at Perungudi Dump yard in Chennai. (File Photos)
This includes two bio-CNG plants with 320 MT per day capacity, two windrow composting plants with 100 MT per day capacity, and two garden-waste processing plants with 160 MT per day capacity, together 580 MT per day. “A 100 MT per day windrow composting plant at Perungudi and a 140 MT per day bio-CNG plant at Sholinganallur have both completed trial runs. That will add roughly 240 MT per day of capacity by the end of Sept,” he said.
Because of poor regulation and maintenance, environmental activist K Raju and member of the Chennai Wetland Action Collective, said several MCCs had failed.
“Biomining is a necessary exercise to clear the legacy waste that has accumulated over 20 years and reclaim the land, but it cannot be treated as a complete or long-term solution to Chennai’s waste problem,” said Geo Damin of Poovulagin Nanbargal NGO. The exercise will be meaningless if fresh waste continues to be mixed with legacy waste and dumped,” he said. It is the failure to establish a sustainable, decentralised waste-management system over several decades,” said D Neelakannan, president of the Tamil Nadu Alliance of Resident Welfare Associations. He said it must be based on segregation at source, processing close to where waste is generated, recycling, composting, biomethanation and scientific management of residual waste. “Many were burning waste inside burial grounds,” he said. However, he said the solution was to redesign and regulate decentralised waste processing rather than abandon it. Like how there are area sabhas in all wards, we need a decentralised composting centre, he said. “Composting infrastructure has to be customised, near fruit and vegetable markets, near industrial pockets,” he said. “The zones have been instructed to compensate for the capacity lost due to the MCC closures by utilising alternative wet-waste processing facilities wherever feasible,” said Sameeran. He said two more facilities have completed trial runs.
“The real failure is not merely the existence of a dumpyard. “The more we move into suburbs, we see waste dumped on roadsides. This needs constant coordination between GCC and CMDA,” he added.