Moving a step ahead in curbing the environmental pollution arising from construction waste, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation commissioned a construction and demolition waste processing unit at Pathuriaghata on Thursday. The plant is the first of its kind in the state.
Inaugurated by mayor of KMC Firhad Hakim, the unit has a capacity of processing 500 tonnes of construction and demolition waste every day. According to sources in the civic body, a Hyderabad-based private agency is responsible for handling and processing the waste materials. The agency is supposed to handle the processing plant for 10 years.
According to Hakim, such waste that is a burden for the civic body now would be a crucial source of income for the KMC in future.
Hakim said, “The waste, after being brought, will be ground to sand for manufacturing paver blocks. The sand would also be used to construct roads. When the sand from the waste would be processed in huge quantities of 500 tonnes, the civic body would generate income by selling it off. We have urged municipal corporations of Bidhannagar and New Town to make rules for dumping the construction and demolition waste here.”
By processing legacy waste, the civic body is producing CNG that would be used as a fuel to run conservancy vehicles, he added.
Till now, the construction waste was being dumped at Dhapa and was also used for filling potholes on roads. With the commissioning of the plant, the KMC will now collect and ferry the generated waste from the construction sites to the plant in exchange for a certain amount of money. At the recycling plant the waste would be processed into paver blocks which are in huge demand now.
The KMC is also considering making it compulsory to dump the construction waste in the processing plant either through the civic body or by the builders themselves.