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Bio-remediation of garbage soon

— Photo : T.Singaravelou

A private firm will soon start the process for remediation of waste at Karuvadikuppam.

PUDUCHERRY: The bio-remediation of garbage dumped in Karuvadikuppam area will shortly begin with the private fertilizer company assigned for the task getting a ‘no objection certificate' from the Public Works Department to carry out the process.

“The garbage dumping site belonged to the Public Works Department. The department last week gave permission to the fertilizer company to install equipment for carrying out the work to bio-remediate the dumping yard,” a senior official told The Hindu. The government does not incur any expenditure in implementing the project, he said.

A few months ago, the Oulgaret Municipality entered into an agreement with Coromandel Fertilizers to carry out bio-remediation of garbage so that compost of good quality generated by the process could be used as fertilizer. The bio-remediation process involved loosening old waste and piling it up into windrows, which are then inoculated by a bio agent after which the windrows are turned once a week.

This procedure would help accelerate decomposition process and after four to six turnings, the rows could be dried and separated. The good compost could then be separated and used as manure.

Following the agreement, a ‘bhoomi puja' was performed on July 7 and the company went ahead with the process by doing sieving manually. However, as residual compost had too much sand in it, the manual process was abandoned as it found to be in-effective.

It was at this point the company decided to do sieving with mechanically powered equipment and sought permission from PWD to install the machinery.

The project was mooted by a group of environmentally conscious people from Auroville, who took up the plan after the Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers issued an order directing fertilizer companies to start marketing in the ratio of at least two bags of organic compost for every three bags of fertilizers sold.

Municipal authorities estimate that the plan would enable them to extract more than 25,000 tonnes of dried compost over the next few years.

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