Waste from Delhi landfill to be used for road construction, says Nitin Gadkari | MC Policy Next

Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari at Moneycontrol Policy Next summit in New Delhi.

Waste from Delhi’s three landfill sites in Ghazipur, Okhla and Bhalaswa will be used in the construction of Urban Extension Road (UER) 2, the third ring road of the capital, Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari said on March 24.

Speaking at the inaugural MoneyControl Policy Next - the Rs 10 trillion infrastructure push summit in New Delhi - Gadkari said that Rs 700 crore will be used from the Central Road Fund for construction, repair, maintenance, and beautification of roads in the project to convert waste to roads.

The National Highways Authority of India committed to using 20 lakh tonnes of waste for road construction, in 2022. Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena met Gadkari in December to urge him to provide funds for the conversion of waste to roads in Delhi.

"My vision is to use all the waste from Delhi's three landfill for the construction of roads in the next two years. I want to see no more landfill mountains in Delhi," Gadkari said.

The road minister added that his ministry is working towards being more sustainable and using renewable resources in the construction of roads in the country. Gadkari said the ministry is also looking to use recycled water for the construction of roads and national highways in India.

The NHAI had signed an agreement with the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) in November 2016, it estimated, for the year 2018, a cumulative cost of Rs 349 crore to use the then entire garbage volume at Ghazipur-13 million metric tonnes.

In 2017, the NHAI had floated a tender for 'lifting and segregation' of the Ghazipur landfill trash, to fill up the 96-km-long Delhi-Meerut Expressway. But the garbage was used only for construction of two kilometres of roads. The NHAI refused to lift the landfill trash due to financial viability.

Delhi has three sanitary landfill sites located at Ghazipur, Okhla, and Bhalswa. Earlier, a piece of land in South Delhi’s Tehkhand area has been allocated to the MCD for an engineering landfill site and the project is expected to be completed by April 2023.

This proposed 'engineering landfill site' will be the city’s first such site. The current three landfill sites in Delhi are spread over an area of 202 acres in total. Inert material – waste which is neither chemically nor biologically reactive and will not decompose or only very slowly – will be provided from the bio-mining project at the city’s landfills.

Bio-mining separates various components of legacy waste such as plastic, paper, cloth, sand and bricks by passing them through a trammel screening machine.

The three landfills in the city  hold more than 28,000,000 tonnes of legacy waste and it has been estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the material recovered after trommeling and bio-mining process consists of soil, stones and inert material.