Tackling the issue of trash | Daily News

Tackling the issue of trash

The partial collapse of a section of the garbage dump at Meethotamulla highlights the need to focus on dealing with waste, recycling and reuse. Solid waste management, wastewater disposal including sewage disposal, siting, drainage and flooding are issues to be dealt by an integrated waste management master plan.

The following need separation from solid waste - Organic material, paper and cardboard, polythene, glass materials, metal, electronic waste, clinical and toxic waste.

The current systems of management of solid waste is:

- Pradeshiya Sabha level waste generation is 15 - 50 MT/ day requiring a compost yard or bio - gas project to manage the daily waste.

- Urban areas organic waste generation is 50 - 100 MT/ day with a compost yard, establishing cluster sanitary land fill and bio - gas project with related Pradeshiya Sabhas.

- Municipal areas solid waste generation is up to 100 - 500 MT/ day with ompost yard/ bio – gas project/ land fill project. Provincial Councils with local authorities need to make cluster arrangement to initiate projects in respective areas.

Meethotamulla Dumping Yard

This dumping yard has an extent of 21 acres with municipal solid waste. Land belongs to UDA and dumping yard managed by Colombo Municipal Council (CMC). Daily 700-800 MT of municipal solid waste transported and dumped by the Colombo MC and Kollonawa UC. Approximately 3 Mn.

MT of solid waste has already been deposited. Mass scale composting facility (capacity 40-45Mt/Day) which was constructed by the PILISARU project is underutilized. Three acres of adjoining land has been identified to acquire to operate the dump for another maximum three years.

Plastic

Every year, 500,000 metric tonnes of plastic and polythene is imported to the country as raw material to be processed, and 30 per cent of the finished material is exported while the rest is released to the local market. Forty per cent of the discarded polythene and plastics within the country is directed to the recycling process. The CEA currently has six recycling plants in operation and two more awaiting commissioning. About 160 firms involved in plastic recycling are registered with the CEA and this number is expected to increase. The CEA planned to support Local Government bodies and private sector to set up 25 recycling centres covering the entire country in the next year or two.

List of EIA approval granted Solid waste management projects-

Landfill site at Welisara, Sanitary landfill site at Alupotha, Meepe Biolan Solid Waste Management Project at Ja-ela, Sanitary landfill site at Kaduwela, Waste to Energy Project at Meethotamulla Waste to Energy Project at Karadiyana, Waste to Energy Project at Kaduwela.

Tackling issues of waste a few options from Sweden and India are shown next.

Facts about waste in Sweden

Stepping up recycling

Swedish households keep separating their newspapers, plastic, metal, glass, electric appliances, light bulbs and batteries. Many municipalities also encourage consumers to separate food waste. And all of this is reused, recycled or composted. Newspapers are turned into paper mass, bottles are reused or melted into new items, plastic containers become plastic raw material; food is composted and becomes soil or biogas through a complex chemical process. Rubbish trucks are often run on recycled electricity or biogas. Wasted water is purified to the extent of being potable. Special rubbish trucks go around cities and pick up electronics and hazardous waste such as chemicals. Pharmacists accept leftover medicine. Swedes take their larger waste, such as a used TV or broken furniture, to recycling centres on the outskirts of the cities.

Waste to energy

Sweden has, over time, developed a large capacity and skill in efficient and profitable waste treatment. In 2014, Sweden even imported 2.7 million tonnes of waste from other countries. In 2015 nearly 2.3 million tonnes of household waste was turned into energy through burning.

The remaining ashes constitute 15 per cent of the weight before burning. From the ashes, metals are separated and recycled, and the rest, such as porcelain and tile, which do not burn, is sifted to extract gravel that is used in road construction. About one per cent still remains and is deposited in rubbish dumps. The smoke from incineration plants consists of 99.9 per cent non-toxic carbon dioxide and water, but is still filtered through dry filters and water. The dry filters are deposited. The sludge from the dirty filter water is used to refill abandoned mines.

Companies joining the effort

Some Swedish companies have voluntarily joined in the struggle. For example, H&M has begun accepting used clothing from customers in exchange for rebate coupons in an initiative called Garment Collecting. The Optibag company has developed a machine that can separate coloured waste bags from each other. People throw food in a green bag, paper in a red one, and glass or metal in another. Once at the recycling plant, Optibag sorts the bags automatically. This way, waste sorting stations could be eliminated. The southern Swedish city of Helsingborg even fitted public waste bins with loudspeakers playing pleasant music – all in the name of recycling.

From plastic to pavement: Another example of creative waste management

A professor of chemistry at an engineering college near Madurai in India, Vasudevan came up with this idea seeing his city’s surrounding field piled with trash. This technique holds the potential of cleaning up countries overnight given its simplicity as it does not require significant technical knowledge nor large investment or changes to existing road-laying procedures. It has already been tested in India, where more than 5,000 kilometers of plastic roads have been laid in at least 11 states since 2004.

Carry bags, cups, thermocoles, foams and flexible films are shredded into small pieces (between 1.6 mm – 2.5 mm). The granite stone is heated to around 1700c. The shredded plastics waste is added to the stone. It get melted and coated over stone in just 30 seconds. Then the bitumen is added and mixed. The mix is used for road construction. From rural roads to national high ways all types of roads can be laid using this technique. Patent has been obtained from the Government of India for the plastic tar road laying process. 


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