SCC plan to segregate waste at source fails
The Sylhet City Corporation's plan to segregate household waste at source failed due to lack of awareness among people and poor monitoring by the authority.
As a result, SCC's initiative to run a modernised sanitary landfill for organic waste disposal remains non-functional since last year, and its contract with Geocycle, a concern of LafargeHolcim Bangladesh, for disposal of non-organic solid waste got stalled.
The city corporation now plans for mechanical segregation of wastes at the landfill and has purchased required machineries to this end.
According to the SCC, the city with over 10 lakh population generates an average of 300 tonnes of waste daily.
For decades, the SCC's waste management operations have been in the traditional way -- collect from households to landfill, then dump and dispose of the waste.
According to the SCC, the city with over 10 lakh population generates an average of 300 tonnes of waste daily.
However, this way of waste disposal has been detrimental to the environment, by polluting the surrounding wetlands and farmlands as well as the air.
Given the situation, the corporation developed a modernised sanitary landfill spending Tk 85 crore, funded by the World Bank, to manage organic waste.
The project, however, ended last year.
Meanwhile, on September 14 last year, the SCC signed an agreement with Geocycle to dispose of non-organic solid waste.
In a bid to collect and dispose of the waste sustainably, the city corporation in January 2020 initiated a project to segregate waste at source.
As part of the project, 600 families of Ward-18 were provided a blue basket for perishable wastes, a red basket for sharp materials and medical wastes, and a sack for plastic-polythene wastes, as part of waste management.
However, due to the lack of awareness among people, the plan of waste segregation at source failed.
"Many people used the baskets for other household purposes instead of collecting and separating wastes according to their types, and their lack of awareness failed the otherwise good plan," said Ward-18 councillor ABM Zillur Rahman Uzzal.
Amid the situations, the sanitary landfill initiative and the contract with Geocycle both got stalled since last year.
The SCC is now all set to start waste segregation at the landfill in a mechanical way as per suggestion by Geocycle experts, and has already purchased one pre-shredder, one splitter, one air separator, and conveying belt from Austria, Germany and India spending Tk 15 crore.
"The equipment will arrive by December and will be put into operation as soon as possible. These machines will separate the organic and heavy waste, which will be then disposed of accordingly in the sanitary landfill and by Geocycle," said SCC chief engineer Nur Azizur Rahman.