Mumbai’s Mulund Dumping Ground Closure Delayed as BMC Targets Waste Processing
BMC aims to process 15,000 tonnes of waste daily by June 2025 amid delays at Mulund dumping ground
Mumbai, India, Mulund Dumping Ground, BMC, Waste Management
Mumbai: So, the Mulund dumping ground is still a hot topic. The officials are pretty worried because they’ve only managed to process about half of the waste there. With just six months left until the June 2025 deadline, they’re pushing the contractor to step it up and handle 15,000 tonnes of waste every day.
This whole closure project was supposed to wrap up by the end of 2024, but things have been dragging on. They awarded a big contract worth Rs. 731 crore back in 2018 to use some fancy tech for waste processing, but it’s been a bumpy ride.
Thanks to the pandemic and some hiccups with permissions, actual work didn’t kick off until 2021. The contractor was supposed to deal with about 11 to 12 lakh tonnes of waste each year, but that hasn’t happened.
Because of all this, the BMC has pushed the closure deadline from October 2024 to June 2025. They even had a meeting recently to check in with the contractor and consultant about the progress.
A senior official mentioned that they’re currently processing around 8,000 to 9,000 tonnes of waste. Since the pandemic caused delays, they gave a one-year extension. The contractor has already faced fines for the hold-up and now has to ramp up to 15,000 tonnes daily. They’ll also need to bring in more machinery to get things moving.
While processing the waste, they found over two lakh tonnes of scrap materials like plastic and wood. The BMC plans to turn these into oil or pellets with two new plants on-site.
One of these will be a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) unit, which can process 200 tonnes of scrap daily to make pellets. These can be used instead of fossil fuels in cement production. The BMC collects around 6,300 metric tonnes of garbage from the city every day.
Out of that, 5,500 metric tonnes go to the processing plant in Kanjurmarg, and about 700 metric tonnes end up at the Deonar dump yard. Mulund is the second-largest dumping ground in the city, covering 24 hectares and has been in operation since 1967.