4 years past deadline, MCD yet to clear Delhi's landfills

The erstwhile three municipal corporations in July 2019 began an ambitious project to clear the three landfills in Delhi through the process of biomining, after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordered that the Capital's legacy waste dumps be cleared within a year.

- Paras Singh

Four years on, the process to clear these "garbage mountains" at Okhla, Bhalswa, and Ghazipur has made little headway - the Municipal Corporation of Delhi's latest progress report dated July 31 this year notes that the civic body has been able to clear 8,999,000 tonne of legacy waste - less than a third of the original 28,000,000 tonne [of legacy waste.

Officials aware of the matter said that NGT's original deadline to clear legacy waste within a year has now been pushed to 2024.

Biomining is a process through which various components of legacy waste, such as plastic, paper, cloth, sand, and bricks are separated by passing them through trommel machines, which act as cylindrical rotating sieves.

MCD has deployed 56 trommel machines at the three landfills 25 units at Ghazipur, 20 at Bhalswa, and 11 at Okhla.