Ahmedabad: Bio-reactor, bio-mining likely solution for Pirana dumpsit, says study

At a time when city's largest dumpsite — Pirana — stands as a big challenge for the government as well as the policymakers, bio-reactor and bio-mining seem to be the only solutions to deal with the situation. As recommended by research undertaken by a masters programme student of Faculty of Planning at CEPT University, sorting and segregation processes at the community level will help in the success of both techniques.

The graduating student Saurav Chowdhury from Master of Urban and Regional Planning have presented their research paper at the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) — World Congress 2018 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Chowdhury presented his paper 'Dilemma of Waste: Dump Sites and Developing Nations' at the Congress on the sub-theme of 'Climate Change and Landfills'.

Speaking about the same, he said, "Based on various international and national case studies, it appears that in order to alter the impacts of dump sites on climate change, the solution we choose should be permanent in nature. It should be based on the present waste at the Pirana dumpsite along with the waste projection in the future. After comparing various parameters like cost, land requirement, time requirement, environmental impacts, social impacts etc., the following potential options were chalked out. Bio-Mining for clearing the legacy waste at Pirana, while the incoming daily waste could be sorted and composted using Bio-Reactor."

It is to be noted that this month onwards, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has started a drive to create awareness on waste segregation and has decided not to collect waste that is not segregated.

As landfills are the source of 10 per cent of the worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, the paper explored the best practices for their closure in order to facilitate climate change mitigation. The research was conducted as a part of the studio project during the third semester headed by Dr Mona Iyer of CEPT University. The research has focused the study of various methods of dumpsites across the world in order to highlight the best practices, which was later used to provide recommendations for the closure of the Pirana Dumpsite in Ahmedabad.

Going further in detail, he said, " A bio-reactor landfill is a type of landfill that operates at an accelerated speed and decomposes the organic waste under a controlled condition. and bio-Mining is a process where open dumpsites are excavated and processed for separating various components in order to re-use or recycle them."

THE RESEARCH

• The research was conducted as a part of the studio project during the third semester headed by Dr Mona Iyer of CEPT University.
   
• The research has focused the study of various methods of dumpsites across the world in order to highlight the best practices, which was later used to provide recommendations for the closure of the Pirana dumpsite in Ahmedabad.