In an effort to enhance the waste management capabilities of Delhi, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is establishing three new waste processing facilities located in Okhla, Singhola, and Ghazipur, in addition to a biogas plant with a capacity of 300 tonnes per day (TPD) at Ghazipur. On Saturday, Chief Minister Rekha Gupta virtually inaugurated the foundation stones for these facilities from the Okhla landfill site, and she also conducted an inspection of the location.
Delhi produces approximately 13,500 tonnes of municipal waste daily, with the MCD currently managing around 60% of this waste. The introduction of the new facilities is expected to increase the city’s capacity for processing fresh waste by 2,900 TPD, thereby addressing the disparity between the amount of waste generated and the volume being processed effectively. The Okhla facility will have a processing capacity of 1,400 TPD, while the Singhola and Ghazipur plants are designed to handle 800 TPD and 700 TPD, respectively.
The MCD’s recent survey has revealed the presence of about 125,000 cattle in Delhi, which produce around 1,500 tonnes of dung each day. In response, both central and state authorities have instructed the MCD to manage this waste to stop it from contaminating the city’s drainage systems and polluting the Yamuna River. To mitigate this issue, a 300-TPD biogas plant dedicated to biodegradable waste is being constructed at Ghazipur.
The initiatives aim to bolster Delhi’s infrastructure for processing fresh waste and to alleviate the pressure on existing landfill sites from daily waste generation. Moreover, the civic body is in the process of building two additional decentralized waste processing plants, which will collectively have a capacity of nearly 3,000 TPD and are expected to become operational within the next year. Biogas plants at Goyla and Ghoga are also projected to start functioning in approximately two months, according to officials.
During her visit to the Okhla landfill site, Gupta assessed the current status of waste management, the amount of land reclaimed, and the operational capabilities of the new processing facilities. She emphasized the urgency of making these new plants fully operational as soon as possible.
This expansion in waste processing capacity coincides with ongoing efforts to eliminate legacy waste from Delhi’s three major landfill sites. Government reports indicate that over the past 18 months, 2.17 million metric tonnes of waste have been cleared from Okhla, Bhalswa, and Ghazipur, resulting in the recovery of nearly 100 acres of land. MCD officials anticipate that the Okhla and Bhalswa sites will be cleared within three months, while the Ghazipur site is scheduled for completion by December 2027.
Gupta highlighted that simply clearing the existing landfills would not suffice; rather, there is a critical need to enhance the system for processing the daily influx of fresh waste to prevent the emergence of new waste accumulations.
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