Bhubaneswar: In a waste-to-wealth initiative, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday inked a pact with Oil India Limited (OIL) for setting up a biogas plant in the city, which will process the wet waste of the city to generate fuel.
Once completed, the facility, which will be located at Nayapalli, will be able to process 200 tonnes of wet waste from the city every day. Oil India will take two years to complete it. The housing and urban development department has allocated 8 acres of land in Nayapalli for the plant.
Currently, Bhubaneswar generates 380 tonnes of wet waste daily. Out of this, 120 tonnes are scientifically processed in 37 micro composting centres (MCCs) to produce organic compost, while the remaining 260 tonnes are processed traditionally at the windrow composting centre.
With the current initiative, Bhubaneswar will take a leap forward with the proposed state-of-the-art biogas plant. While the initial capacity of the plant will be 200 tonnes of wet waste every day, it will have an expandable feature for an additional 100 tonnes of waste.
“We are on a path to make Bhubaneswar a greater and better city. This initiative today is a step to achieve this goal. The biogas produced from the plant will be used as fuel, while the compost can be used in agriculture,” said urban development minister Krushna Chandra Mahapatra.
Mahapatra said they are planning to set up more such facilities in urban centres like Cuttack, Puri, Rourkela, Sambalpur, and Berhampur. “With the collaboration with Oil India, we are making attempts to generate wealth out of waste,” he said.
Principal secretary, urban development department, Usha Padhee, on the occasion, said this initiative is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious vision of a Swachh Bharat, which aims at making life comfortable while safeguarding the environment.
“There was a belief that development and environment can’t go hand in hand, but the Swachh Bharat initiative has altered this view. This initiative will contribute to the well-being of the people while disposing of the garbage in a most scientific manner,” she said.
Oil India CMD Ranjit Rath said that this initiative will contribute to the NetZero commitment made by India. “We have collaborated with the BMC to process the municipal solid waste and convert it into two products, which are mainly green natural gas and green manure,” he said.