With its new, more comprehensive solid waste management plan in place, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has said it will generate 28 mega watts (MW) of power from treated solid waste.

The civic body has announced that it will implement two ambitious projects on a public-private partnership. There are currently two projects in the pipeline, one where 2,000 tonnes of solid waste will be converted into 16 MW of power. In the other project, 1,200 tonnes of solid waste collected at the Corporation’s Ghazipur landfill site will be converted into 12 MW of power.

According to Delhi Mayor Kanwar Sain, with the agency’s segregated garbage collection plan in place, no malba or plastic waste gets mixed with the solid waste, hence, paving the way for generation of power.

“Delhi needs to move from a high energy consuming, wasteful economic model to one that conserves energy and minimises waste,” Sain said on Friday, while talking at a meeting of the South Asian Regional Meet of International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.

Sain said that MCD’s new solid waste management plan makes appreciable improvements in the existing system in all aspects of solid waste management.

Some salient features of the plan include minimising absenteeism among safai karamcharis through the biometric system; segregation at source, door-to-door collection, decentralised composting at individual/community level to avoid transportation, introduction of sweeping of main roads using mechanical sweepers, processing of waste through cost-effective technologies to suit local waste quality and processing of construction and demolition waste.