Chandigarh MC turning coconut shells into fuel, ropes
More than one tonne of coconut shell is generated everyday in Chandigarh, mainly from roadside sellers
Coconut shells from across the city, which were earlier ending up unused at the dumping ground, are now being collected and processed by the Chandigarh municipal corporation to produce usable goods.
More than one tonne of coconut shell is generated everyday in the city, mainly from roadside sellers. The demand for coconut water is high all through the year, though it picks up exponentially during the summer.
“The project was started in June and MC has already collected more than 29 metric tonnes (MT) of coconut shells, of which around 8-9 MT has been fed into the coconut crusher at the municipal solid waste processing plant,” said Anindita Mitra, MC commissioner.
The civic body has deployed eight of its garbage collection vehicles to collect coconut shells from 26 sites across the city. MC is generating refuse derived fuel (RDF) from them which is being sold and also plans to convert the crushed coconut fibres into ropes.
“We are moving towards producing coir bales, which are used by several industries,” said Mitra.
Notably, MC has cleaned up around 300-MT legacy waste at the solid waste processing plant in Sector 25, to get more space to dry the wet waste for its full processing. After removal of legacy waste, the plant’s capacity to process wet waste has increased.
Buried under the legacy waste was a shredder system for wet waste, which is now being used to process the coconut shells.
MC has nearly doubled its capacity to process wet waste since October last year. At the time, only 70 MT per day was being processed, which has now increased to 150 MT. MC is also getting the plant repaired and will get it upgraded.