Saturday, May 16, 2015

Smart Solid Waste Collection

In the Smart City Plan prepared by NISG (National Institute of Smart Governance) for New Town, there has been a plan for the first ever Smart Solid Waste Collection through underground network. It is called "Underground Vacuum Systems for Sustainable Waste Handling".

The idea is that while water supply, waste water, power cables, optical fibre cables, telephone cables etc all go through an underground network system, solid waste is still collected through trucks from residential zones from vats or other common storage points. These vats / storage points are often unhygienic and roadside dustbins remain unemptied and dirty especially during the day after a morning clearance.

 The smart solution for solid waste collection consists of laying underground pipes through which air is sucked out like a vacuum cleaner for transporting wastes from source to destination. There is also a system of compaction so that from an underground end-point, the compacted output is taken away by trucks in tanker-like containers without any spillage. These networks can connect to apartment chutes as also from public dustbins. Trucks thus have to travel much less, releasing traffic load from city roads. The Eco Park is getting more and more visitors and food / packing wastes overflow in peak winter days so that cleaning vats have had to enter twice a day even last season. This issue will be more pronounced in coming years. So an underground solid waste collection system is very much suited for Eco Park.

We had a discussion with an expert engineer from Bangalore today and learnt that such an underground collection system is in operation for long at Wembley City area in London, Stockholm, and many other places of the world. On a smaller scale,  GIFT city in Ahmedabad is also trying it out. We decided to publish a Request for Information from turnkey solution providers for Eco Park as a pilot scheme, A photo taken in Hidco today:

CE NKDA, Mr A R Shine, Expert from Bangalore, me, CEO NKDA,
GM Hidco and EE NKDA at Hidco Bhavan on 16 May 2015
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Here is a clipping:
Ei Samay dt 16 May 2015

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