NEW DELHI: A group of students from IIT-Delhi may have an answer or two to the problem of garbage dumping in cities. They have developed a novel mechanism that helps residents segregate and compost garbage on the local level.
Sankalp Katiyar, a final-year student of mechanical engineering at IIT-Delhi, said most residential areas were bulk generators of waste and, therefore, must segregate and compost them on their own to ensure that not everything ended up at the landfills.
“We found in our surveys that each household produces around 0.75kg of wet waste. And then there are the fallen leaves that add to the waste. Segregation doesn’t happen that well and most of the waste goes to landfill.”
With piles of waste at
Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla spewing out toxic gases, contaminating groundwater with leachate and degrading the soil, the problem has assumed gigantic proportions. The initiative, titled ‘Nirmalya’, under Enactus IIT-Delhi, aims to reduce the amount of garbage ending up in the overburdened landfills through decentralised composting.
Katiyar said while home composting had picked up, it had a variety of problems — odour, rodents, excessive composting time and bad quality of compost produced. The IIT students have designed their own novel machine, one with semi-automated features, proper aeration and provisions for smell reduction through support from the pro
fessors at IIT.
The students also conducted sensitisation and awareness programmes in two of Delhi’s schools — The Foundation School and The Greenfields School. “The attempt is to create an intelligent and conscious citizen,” Katiyar said.
Ghazipur landfill (File Photo)