Announcement of electricity generation plant proposal based on burning garbage reflects that Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has not briefed A R Verma, Mayor, Delhi about the previous experiments with the waste to energy plant undertaken in Timarpur in the 1980s. It appears that MCD has also kept the Mayor in dark about its negotiations with the Energy Development Limited (EDL), an Australian burn technology provider.

The MCD had to withdraw from entering into the agreement with EDL for a waste to energy plant at Gazipur. This new proposal is akin to falling in the same trap and is the most recent case of facilitating toxic technology by peddling old wine in new bottle. Both the President Abdul Kalam and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi seems to have been taken for a ride because this Hyderabadi prescription of waste disposal is contrary to the recommendations of the Supreme Court. The case on waste management is still in the apex court.

An incinerator referred to as the Waste to Energy (WTE) plant came up at Timarpur in East Delhi in the 1980s. The Danish incinerator installed here at a cost of Rs. 44 crores was operational for exactly 21 days and was then shut down because the waste being generated was unfit for burning and had a low calorific value. And since then it has been laying idle and in fact, incurring maintenance cost to this day.

The Corporation, however, seems to have forgotten its earlier mistakes and is now ready to repeat it. The Capital's waste composition is 41.81 per cent stones and ashes which makes the technology non-viable. And with a high percentage of sand and inert materials in the urban waste, it becomes difficult to separate them making the process uneconomical.

It is surprising why the Timarpur failure has been forgotten. Sometime back the Delhi High Court had asked Comptroller and Auditor General to probe the Timarpur deal suspecting a scam. We aren't sure what stage the probe is in. It is a well-known fact that there is not even one viable demonstration project anywhere in the country, initiatives. It is ironic that we haven't bothered to learn the lessons from the failure of Danish technology based Timarpur project.

MCD does not have answers to questions regarding cost and caloric value and health effects of burn technologies. MCD is falling prey to a dubious waste technology provider to solve burgeoning waste problem of the city. It seems to be hell-bent on experimenting with technological solution to a management problem as if Delhi residents are guinea pigs ignoring the lessons from Timarpur and Gazipur.

Quite contrary to what is being claimed about the waste to energy (WTE) projects in Hyderabad, Vijaywada for treatment of urban waste, "Municipal solid waste is not considered to be a renewable energy source since it tends to be a mixture of fuels that can be traced back to renewable and non-renewable sources". Energy generated from waste by burning it is highly polluting. Attempts are underway by vested interests to promote non-renewable energy incinerator or burn technologies as renewable energy technologies.

But the way Ministry of Science and Technology’s agency Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) is promoting SELCO International Limited’s pelletisation based waste-to-energy plant perverts waste management because it encourages waste maximisation, which is contrary to the basic tenet of waste management -- that, is reduce, reuse and recycle. Villagers from the Gandamguda, Perencheru panchayat of Ranga Reddy district, Andhra Pradesh and Elikatta village, Shadnagar where SELCO’s installation are located are complaining of pollution and unbearable stink from it. Similar plants have been installed in Vijaywada and several others are proposed in the state.

Pelletisation is a process of making fuel pellets out of the combustible part of waste after mixing with binders and additives. The electricity generation involves burning of pellets, which are also referred as refuse derived fuel in the plant’s furnace, this releases heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants like dioxins. These toxins are building up in the environment, especially the aquatic ecosystem of the villages such as Osman Sagar and Himayatsagar drinking water bodies in its vicinity. The emission of the notorious pollutants in Gandamguda is linked to cancer, immune and reproductive system disorders, birth defects, and other health threats.

Besides environmental groups, the villagers have sought removal of the dumpsite and the plant. Residents of Gandamguda and nearby villages and colonies are showing evidence corroborated by the findings of Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board, which indicate that the chemicals leeching out of dumpsites and the air pollution because of open burning is entering the food chain.

Everyone in Peerancheru Gram Panchyat and its adjoining regions is now contaminated with these harmful pollutants and its symptoms are visible in the form of brain fever, vomiting, jaundice, ashthma, miscariages, infertiltiy, says D. Shakuntala, Sarpanch of the Gram Panchyat. If concerned authorities do not act in right earnest to remove the dumpsite and SELCO’s installations, villagers would resort to unprecedented agitation warns the Sarpanch.

How much harm are we willing to accept before we abandon these deadly ways of managing society’s garbage, ask the environmental groups of Hyderabad.

Gandamguda literally means sandalwood village but it has become Durgandhamguda that is full of rotten stink due to the Not in My Back Yard (NIMBY) attitude of Hyderabad municipal corporation.

Burning of waste transfers the hazardous characteristics of waste from solid form to air, water and ash. It also releases new toxins, which were not present in the original waste stream, besides generating heavy metals. Incineration is unambiguously polluting, the suggestions of there being good incinerators and bad incinerators are ridiculous. There is a need for greater circumspection within the sub-sectors of "environmental" services because notorious attempts to encourage incineration of municipal waste to produce energy and treating it as a "renewable energy" projects is fraught with disastrous consequences.

Turning waste into ash by processing it inside an incinerator vastly increases the surface area of the garbage and thus makes it leach much more rapidly. What you get at the bottom is not a thin, weak leachate but a rich, strong leachate that is more toxic than the leachate, which would have been if it had leached raw garbage instead of ash.

In India the campaign against such technologies has been purposeful in so far as Indian Commerce and Industry Ministry has categorically termed incinerators as a polluting technology, which is being thrust upon developing countries. Apparently it has fine-tuned itself with the obsolete nature of these outdated technologies. Waste burning and combustion technologies violate Kyoto Protocol, Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and recommendations of Global Mercury Assessment Report. The rationale for trade in goods, which violate environmental international treaties and attempt to promote them as environmental goods and services, is questionable.

Solid waste incinerators, which are considered environmental goods by some, are considered as polluters by others. Such goods also should not be included in the World Trade Organisation (WTO)’s list of environmental goods and services, as per the Commerce Ministry. But strangely, one of the only fiscally supported schemes for municipal wastes is the waste-to-energy project. The MNES and Ministry of Science and Technology are promoting burn technologies unmindful of health and environmental consequences.

Unfortunately, though the project is garbed as a waste management one, it does not even address the basic causes of the waste problem. It cannot be justified either for energy generation or for waste abatement. The ideal resource management strategy for MSW is to avoid its generation in the first place. This implies changing production and consumption patterns to eliminate the use of disposable, non-reusable, non-returnable products and packaging, instead of adopting technologies akin to SELCO’s, which brings grief and perverts waste management.

Incentives and subsidies should be offered in areas of `cold’ technologies (bio-methanation, composting, vermi composting) alone, which are suited to our country economically, socially and also to our wastes. The Indian garbage, which has around 85% of organic matter, is not suited for burn technologies. Alternatives to WTE technology include composting, recycling, biomethanation, simple indigenous technologies and advanced locality management.