KOCHI: When Kochi is grappling with the issue of waste disposal, the city’s upcoming premier IT park Smart City-Kochi is setting an example by its plans to configure the park as a ‘zero discharge zone’. With a proposed build up area of 6 million square feet and 90,000 employees amidst a 246-acre campus cocooned by the Kadambrayar River, Smart City-Kochi plans to be a self-sustaining unit in the areas of solid and sewage waste management.
The master plan points to an ecologically-friendly integrated township which includes numerous IT towers, residential apartments, 5,000-student international school, hospital, shopping malls and recreational public activity zones, which will house close to 1,30,000 people by 2023. The plan also incorporates 75 acres or 30 per cent of the total area, which is home to indigenous vegetation and animals, to be kept untouched, providing a sense of natural co-existence.
Each tower to be constructed, which is being developed by private individual developers, whether it be office, residential or support infrastructure, is mandated to have its own sewage treatment plants that can process drain water to be reused in cooling towers and for gardening. Smart-city also hosts a network of sewage water pipelines connecting the residential apartments to IT towers and other establishments to effectively utilise the excess treated water across the park. “This will help us in significantly reducing the extraction of groundwater for daily needs,” said K Kurian, senior technical advisor, Smart City-Kochi.
When it comes to solid waste management, all the organic waste from the towers are to be processed within the park to produce manure for internal usage. “The leftover solid waste of plastic and paper, are to be given designated agencies so it may properly be recycled, ensuring a sustainable model of waste management in the park,” added Kurian. In a step to becoming energy efficient Smart City-Kochi will also be slowly moving towards the target of generating 6 lakh unit or 10 per cent of the total consumption of tower-1 by harvesting solar energy.
The rest of the towers coming up are also mandated to do the same, which will reduce its dependence on outside sources of energy generation. The operational tower-1 has also acquired Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, which is one of the most popular green building certification programs used worldwide.
Treated water used for landscaping: Manoj Nair
So far as SmartCity is concerned, all designs of waste water treatment are based on ‘zero discharge’ to environment. SCK has installed STPs and treated water is used for landscaping and flushing. All organic/wet waste is treated and converted into manure. Only plastic and paper are sent out of the premises for recycling.
This is part of guidelines to be implemented by all developers setting up projects inside SmartCity.
On the question of the proposed Brahmapuram waste plant, he said the plant sits next to the thriving IT hub of Kochi where the working population alone is expected to reach one lakh from 2021 and thus modernisation and technology change at the waste plant is absolutely critical.
We appreciate the efforts of the government of Kerala to install a modern plant to generate energy from the waste. It is expected the timely completion of this project should resolve the issues faced by the general public, neighbourhood developments and other stakeholders.