Mumbai: Trombay-headquartered Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has seen demand for its technology of turning sludge-to-manure across municipalities like Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Indore (Madhya Pradesh) and Raipur (Chhattisgarh). However, its very own local body, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is not very keen to use it, revealed a former BARC official.
When enquired about this unwillingness of BMC, the BARC official claimed, “This delay or say unwillingness to adopt this technology is mainly due to corruption.” He continued otherwise what else would stop a corporation like BMC to even consider such a technology.
BARC has signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Indore and work is in progress for the plant there. Meanwhile, in case of Raipur Municipal Corporation, the former official said the talks are in advance stage and MoU will be signed soon.
The Ahmedabad plant that is up and running is a Rs 30 crore plant and can convert 100 tonne of sludge per day into fertiliser which can be sold in the market as manure. The sludge-to-fertiliser plant is not the only technology that BARC had been pitching to BMC. The other one is plasma incinerator.
“For a city that produces 20-30 per cent of plastic waste, we suggest they should look at this technology along with other technologies.” BARC is now considering setting up plasma incinerator unit (in which poisonous gases emitted after burning plastic can be broken down) in Anushakti Nagar without any support from local body.
For a while, BMC and BARC have been in loggerheads. This was after BMC refused to collect waste from Anushakti Nagar (residential complex where government employees reside) as BARC failed to hire any agency to collect the garbage and waste continued to pile up.
With setting up of this plant, the issue between BMC and BARC might be sorted as this Rs 5 crore plant is expected to handle 5 tonne of waste everyday. “We hope to increase the capacity of this plant after two years of its operations to 100 tonne per day.”
