Cleanup act: LMC begins drill to reduce garbage mound at Shivri

LUCKNOW: The countdown for processing over 20 lakh metric tonnes of the legacy waste piled up at the Lucknow Municipal Corporation's (LMC) solid waste management (SWM) plant on Mohan road in Shivri has finally begun after two decades.
This week LMC has strengthened its capacity to process untreated waste using more machinery and biological methods. The move will not only help the LMC to lower heights of the garbage mound spread around 30 acres and measuring over 40 feet in height, but will also generate revenue. For this purpose the civic body has hired four new trommel machine-cum-ballistic separators for treatment of the solid waste.
Additional municipal commissioner Arvind Kumar Rao said, "These machines are capable of segregating and processing 190 tonnes per hour (TPH). Out of the four machines, one is capable of 100 TPH while the others are processing 30 TPH. LMC has taken these machines on the rent after floating tender recently and will have to pay Rs 230 per metric tonnes for processing. These machines are used to compress, segregate waste for producing inert, refuse derived fuel (RDF) and compost. The inert is used for landfill, RDF is given to cement companies and compost is used in farming.
Earlier, the plant had 10 such machines and collectively it has the capacity of processing 1,800 metric tonnes daily if it runs at full capacity. Now the plant has 14 trommel machine-cum-ballistic separators and if it runs at least 18 hours then will process around 5,220 metric tonnes of waste daily.
The city generates 2,000 metric tonnes of the waste daily and through these machines it will reduce pile-garbage but also help in effective disposal of the waste. On the other hand, LMC is practicing a biological augmentation method for lowering the height of a garbage mound.
In this method LMC uses curd, jaggery, cow dung, sodium carbonate, vinegar, bacteria and water. After mixing in the proper ratio and storing in a container for a week, it is used to spray on the garbage mound which later becomes compost in the next eight-nine days.
Municipal commissioner, Inderjit Singh said, "The practice of bioaugmentation is very effective as it will not help in making compost naturally but also reduce foul smell. LMC will use all resources to completely process the SWM at Shivri plant in a year," he added.