NEW DELHI: With landfill sites across major cities filled beyond capacity, the central pollution control board (CPCB) has now come out with fresh draft guidelines proposing use of solid and industrial waste as fuel in cement industry to ensure that millions of tonnes hazardous waste is utilised.
According to CPCB, about 7.4 million tonnes of hazardous wastes is annually generated in India, out of which around 3.98 Million tones is recyclable and can be used for resource or energy recovery. Incidents like massive fire in Mumbai’s landfill site Deonar last year makes it important to recycle solid waste.
The production of cement in India is about 300 million tons per annum, for which estimated coal and raw material (Lime stone, Iron ore, Clay, Bauxite etc.) requirement are 50 million tons per annum and 450 Million Tons per annum, respectively.
“The country, therefore, has vast potential to utilize large quantum of wastes such as non-recyclable hazardous and other wastes, segregated combustible fractions from MSW or Municipal Solid Wastes (MSW) based Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF), non-hazardous industrial wastes, plastics wastes, tyre wastes and non-usable bio-mass as an alternative fuel and raw material (AFR) in cement kilns,” says draft guidelines.
The pollution control board said that such utilization would help in recovering energy and material value present in them thereby reducing the consumption of primary fossil fuels and raw materials.
“Utilising these materials as AFRs will also reduce large quantity of GHG emissions of the country which is in line with our commitment made in the Paris agreement,” it said.
The ministry of environment and forests has recently notified rules on management of Hazardous and Other Wastes, which outlines the hierarchy of wastes management, wherein, prevention, minimization, reuse, recycling, recovery, utilisation including pre-processing and co-processing was envisaged prior to considering the option of disposal through incineration or secured land filling.