With over 30000 students from 461 schools across all 23 districts, the Sustainability Leaders Program started on 1st October and is now in its fifth week. In the first four weekly exercises, students attended a webinar on fundamental understanding of waste management systems, saw ground the waste segregation processes through field visits conducted by the city governments, attempted a critical thinking problem-solving assignment, and attended a creativity workshop and drew posters, written stories themed on waste segregation at source.
Today, in its fifth week, I conducted a webinar with students to understand the framework of Bioremediation processes, waste ecosystem, and value chains.
Dumping Grounds
I start by sharing a short video clip from the Hollywood sci-fi thriller Idiocrasy, which depicts a future world where people live in the shadow of garbage mountain ranges that collapse one day, leading to an avalanche of trash. When waste is not sorted at the point of generation, then different stakeholders – the waste collectors, the waste processing people at the material recovery centre do not feel any incentive to segregate the waste, and the mixed waste ends up at the city's dumping grounds – where it rots, smells and pollutes. I visited a few dumping sites in and around my city, where millions of tons of refuge have been piling up for years.
Chandigarh has devoted 45 acres of land to the landfill site, Mohali has 40 acres, and Ludhiana, the most populous city in Punjab, has about 50 acres covered in garbage mounds. Our Solid Waste Management Rules 2016 prescribe bioremediation processes to clear our dumping grounds. Bioremediation refers to biomining or excavating waste heaps, sorting them, and disposing them.
Ludhiana Bioremediation – A case study
During 2022-2023, I studied the 2-year bioremediation project at the dumping grounds in Ludhiana City allotted to a private company @ Rs 550 per ton. I've shared short video clippings of the operations during my presentation. You can see three mobile biomining machines in operation. Each machine can sort up to 500 tonnes of waste per day. The excavator's arm feeds the trash into the machine. The vibrations loosen the debris, and the gradient separates the heavy stones. The sieving and segregation happens through three conveyor belts placed in slanting positions in different directions. This operation creates three piles. The first pile is the bio-soil or bio-earth, a fine organic soil with high nitrogen content. It forms a small mound. The second pile is composed of inerts, such as gravel, with a size between 5 mm and 20 mm. The third pile is the largest, labeled as the RDF-Refuge Derived fuel, made up of non-reducible, non-degradable waste that is 150 mm or larger.
Bioremediation - Challenges
Bioremediation may appear simple, but its implementation is not easy. The inerts are to be picked up by the National Highways Authority or the State PWD. However, action is often long delayed. The farmers hesitate to use bio-soil as a fertilizer as they are apprehensive of heavy metal contamination because it has been mixed with all kinds of waste for many years. The greatest challenge is the disposal of the largest mound of RDF. Spoilt due to mixing with wet waste, this bio-mined RDF has lost its recycling value. It could be used as a fuel for industrial boilers. Still, it is highly polluting, and its combustible value is considerably lowered due to
contamination, degradation, and the passage of time. So, most agencies tend to compact the RDF and re-dump it in low-lying areas. But isn't it essentially just shifting the problem to another landfill?
An onsite leachate tank attempts to capture the liquid generated while the machine excavates the waste. This liquid would otherwise contaminate the groundwater. Most of it evaporates, but its disposal mechanism is important.
Is Bioremediation successful? Well, the photographs show some credible work done over a year.
Whatever legacy waste we have, we must deal with it, but can we afford to rebuild these garbage mountains? Bioremediation may be helpful in dismantling the existing waste mountains, but it is not an alternative to source segregation and proper waste management.
Based on my field study, my 3000-word article 'From Dumping Grounds to Value Chains' was published in the CSIR national publication—Science Reporter (Jan 2024).
Also, I wrote about my waste management journey for Down to Earth, published in Feb 2024.
We need to encourage waste segregation by all waste generators. When different types of trash are handled differently right from the source, it eases recycling and upcycling of the waste at the material recovery facility provided by municipal bodies.
Sustainability Leaders participants must practice and demonstrate at their homes, schools, and communities how to sort waste, motivate people to maintain separate dustbins for wet and dry garbage at homes, and waste collectors to make compartments in their carts and segregate waste at the point of collection.
How do we incentivize source segregation?
Another question that often bothers me is how to incentivize source segregation.
In my household, I have seen newspapers, oil cans, and crates of cold drink bottles carefully piled up to be given to the raddiwala, a street hawker who would pay a small amount to carry them away. As a child, I saw my grandmother carefully check his balance before weighing the newspapers. I never thought much about what happened to the waste after that or how this traditional practice of segregation over the generations has created value and livelihoods.
Similarly, we can exchange segregated waste with plant pots or compost bags to households, fresh battery cells for e-waste, and sanitary napkins for sanitary waste. Also, how about if the shopkeeper can return 10% of the cost of the consumable item with a return of the empty wrapper, plastic can, or tetra pack? Think about eating a Lays chips packet for Rs 10, and I get back one rupee on returning to the shopkeeper, who, in turn, gets back, say, Rs 1.50 from the manufacturer. This framework is called Extended Producer Responsibility. In our price-sensitive country, we'll stop seeing pan masala wrappers and chip packets strewn all over our roadsides or hill slopes when people can get back money on their return.
Extended Producers Responsibility
If we create a value chain for all waste items, don't you agree that it would potentially encourage households and all of us to maintain proper segregation practices? With this thought, I leave you to ponder over some innovative solutions to waste management.
Do subscribe and keep yourself updated: https://youtu.be/s2HsXK5DWLA
댓글