The mountain-like pile of stinking garbage that greets you when you drive on the NH 24 past Ghazipur in East Delhi may soon become a thing of the past as the Road Ministry has allowed the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to use the municipal waste for earth-filling during construction of highways.
Approved by two Central agencies — Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Central Road Research institute (CRRI), the NHAI plans utilisation of this solid waste material for its highway construction programme on NH-24, Meerut Expressway.
“The NHAI will write to the Environment Ministry to allow usage of solid waste material in lieu of fly ash wherever feasible. This initiative will promote the construction of green highways in the country as it amounts to substantial replacement of natural earth, mining of which causes environmental problems,” said an official.
The NHAI is already utilising fly ash up to 30 per cent of earth filling in the Eastern Peripheral Expressway and using other slag materials elsewhere. To allay the doubts of Concessionaires and to encourage them to utilise this waste, the NHAI has offered to indemnify the Concessionaires for the stretches where this waste material would be tried.
The NHAI had entrusted the assignment of technically verifying whether solid waste material generated from Municipal/City waste can be utilised for highway construction to Central Road Research Institute (CRRI).
The NHAI official said that CSIR-CRRI together conducted a study by collecting 70 tonnes of Municipal solid waste from different locations of 5/10/15 years old from Ghazipur landfill site and recommended such waste contains about 65 to 70 per cent of soil components which can be used in embankment construction after segregation from the municipal solid waste.
“The methodology suggested for use is by drying the collected municipal solid waste and passing through different sieves. The percentage passing from the 16 mm sieve contains 44 to 48 per cent of municipal solid waste which can be directly used in embankment construction. For utilising the municipal solid waste passing through 32 mm sieve, the segregation of plastic material and PVC etc. will have to be blown by using high capacity blowers at the segregation plant,” said the official.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (East) had earlier approached the NHAI to make use of waste at Ghazipur landfill site, whereupon Chairman NHAI had commissioned analytical study through CRRI.