RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, Dec.5: The garbage dump at Jhiri in the outskirts of Jharkhand capital is ready to give a good earning opportunity. To whom, it is not clear.
The situation has come after the state cabinet approved Rs 136 crore to handle 82 thousand metric tonnes of garbage accumulated in the last 22 years in the dumping yard spread over 40-acre area in Jhiri.
The amount was approved at a time when all plans earlier chalked out for garbage management in the dumping yard were dropped before its implementation allowing the mountain of garbage to exist at the cost of the healthy living atmosphere of people residing in Jhiri.
The Waste to Energy (WTE) plant project involving Rs 200 crore was initiated on October 4, 2016, and was expected to be completed in November 2018 but it was dropped after Mumbai-based Essel Infra Projects did not find it economically viable due to poor source-waste segregation in Ranchi.
Prior to this, RMC had hired two agencies — A2Z in 2011 and Essel Infra in 2015 — to collect and dispose city’s garbage and set up a waste processing plant at Jhiri for making fertilizers, eco-bricks and electricity out of the dumped garbage but it also failed after civic body terminated both the companies for allegedly falling on their given tasks.
RMC had assigned GAIL India Limited in March 2021 to set up a Compressed Biogas Plant (CBG) but it has been more than a year since the agreement was signed but there are no signs of any CBG yet.
The new disposal plan, for which Rs 136 crore has been approved, includes bio-mining, resource recovery and disposal of plastic waste. Under this scheme the said land will be made garbage free.
Bio-mining is a process of treating garbage or waste with bio-organisms or natural elements like air and sunlight. Over time, the biodegradable component of the waste gets decomposed through the natural process, and the remaining part i.e. non-biodegradable material is then dealt separately.
It extracts metals of economic interest from rock ores or mine waste. It comprises 4 steps including excavation of legacy waste, stabilising the waste using bioremediation, segregation of excavated waste and then sustainable management and its safe disposal. The methods of bio-mining include bioleaching, bio-oxidation, dump leaching, and agitated leaching.
Resource recovery is the activity of separating materials from waste that can be recycled into new products or used as an energy alternative to fossil fuels and is actioned with the goal of diverting as much waste from landfill as possible.
Bioremediation is a process that uses mainly microorganisms, plants, or microbial or plant enzymes to detoxify contaminants in the soil and other environments.
