Swiss tips for Siliguri waste disposal

Deb (left) talks to the representatives of the Swiss firm in Siliguri on Sunday. Picture by Kundan Yolmo

Siliguri, July 3: A Switzerland-based firm today made a presentation before the Siliguri Municipal Corporation, suggesting a scientific disposal of civic wastes by converting them into electricity.

“It is a completely environment-friendly project by which we can produce energy through gasification (turn solid substance into gas) of the municipal solid waste by setting up a plant at the civic dumping ground. All we need is a regular supply of waste from the civic body and its infrastructural support,” Richard Burton, managing director of Pyromex New Centre Energy LLG, the Switzerland-based firm, said today.

According to Burton, such projects had been taken up in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, USA, Germany and Argentina. In India, the project has been implemented in Kerala. “We are going to Sikkim tomorrow where we will discuss a similar project with the officials of the state government,” he said.

Representatives of the Swiss firm today met north Bengal development minister Gautam Deb, chairperson of the Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority Rudranath Bhattacharya and SMC’s former Mayor Gangotri Dutta. A representative of the firm’s Indian partner, ICE Caps, also attended the meeting.

Bikash Goyal, the director of ICE Caps, said they require at least 150 tonnes of waste everyday to generate power and 2-3 bighas of land for setting up the plant. “The waste will be gasified (converted to gas) by applying 1,200 degrees Celsius heat and from it energy will be produced. Once we get permission from the state government and the Union ministry of environment and forests, we can start building the plant. The power generation would commence after another six months. There can be eight to 12 MW of power generated every hour which we can sell to the government. The total project cost would be around Rs 180 crore, which would be invested by us,” Goyal said.

The SMC collects about four metric tonnes of garbage including domestic and clinical waste every day.

“We have decided to set up a committee which will study the viability of the proposal,” Deb said after the meeting.

-The Telegraph