16 Oct Solutions that make impact
TOWARDS ZERO LANDFILL: PROTECTING LANDBANKS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
– Mr. Uma Maheshwar Reddy, CEO CUBE Bio Energy, Ideation3x Pte Ltd Portfolio company
India produces 170KTPD of Municipal Solid Waste that needs to be treated and disposed. Government of India has undertaken nationwide cleanliness drive to clean up all cities, towns and villages improving health and hygiene, thus reducing mortality rates directly related to poor sanitation. However, pollution has proven to be much more fatal than the pandemic (e.g., over 2.4 million deaths in 2019 due to pollution as compared to 524,000 deaths due to Covid-19).
Improper disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) is a serious health concern. Landfills around India are bursting at the seams and continued practice of waste dumping will require millions of hectares of land in the coming decade. Not only a serious insanitary issue, landfills severely pollute air and water leading to epidemics of vector-borne diseases, spread by rodents and insects. Around 4% of solid waste is currently landfilled in South Asia and majority of waste are dumped openly. More than 50% of Municipal Solid Waste is landfilled in North America. Across the world, we will be using millions of hectares of land and it is matter of time, we will be running out of land.
At Ideation3x, we employ modern, sensible, and practical waste management practises of sorting, treating, recycling of waste to useful products and convert large part of waste to energy and effectively targeting in dumping waste to less than 1% in landfills, far exceeding the national standards that allows 20% of waste from municipal bodies to be landfilled”.
We are building solutions at every level where we create value to every stakeholder. At each level we provide unique solutions. A canvas of our activities is shown in the picture indicating our intervention at every stage of solid waste management activities.
“We are destroying mother earth by extracting millions of years of accumulation of resources like fossil fuels, mining, coal and creating pollution. We are destroying our mother earth by dumping all waste as landfills. We have no business to exist on this earth and yet the audacity of us humans is we give lectures on morals and principles of good human behaviour. At Ideation3x, we employ modern, sensible, and practical waste management practises of sorting, treating, recycling of waste to useful products and convert large part of waste to energy and effectively targeting in dumping waste to less than 1% in landfills, far exceeding the national standards that allows 20% of waste from municipal bodies to be landfilled”.
REDUCING GLOBAL WARMING, PROTECTING ASSETS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS: BIG ASK TO ACHIEVE: AT 2DEGREES CLICON WE DO ALL, BY SHEETAL AGARWAL AND VIKAS AGARWAL, CEO 2DEGREES CLICON AND PORTFOLIO COMPANIY OF I3X.
Plastics has become integral part in raising the standard of living of human being. This has increased the demand for plastics globally. In India alone, about 50billion plastic bags are dumped annually. The continuous rising demand of plastic has led to growth of plastic waste accumulation in landfills. It takes billions of years for plastics to degrade naturally. Continuous disposal of plastics into landfills causes serious and severe environmental pollution. The recycling of plastics especially, industrial and municipal waste is still a laborious and expensive process.
At 2Degrees Clicon (2DC), we manufacture alternate fuels equivalent to light diesel oil from mixed plastics and polymer and serve many customers. During covid lockdown, we successfully developed and commercialised alternate fuel equivalent to industrial high-speed diesel purely from plastic waste. We engaged trails with a pharmaceutical company, who were using high speed diesel as fuel in their boilers. Various trails were conducted, and we fine-tuned the specification to meet or exceed the requirements of the boiler fuel, without compromising the performance of the boiler. The customer observed that the performance of the boiler has been stable, and the fuel consumption and emissions were lower against high-speed diesel as fuel. Today, we have added few more customers and are planning to augment and increase the production capacity. At 2DC, we are converting commercially 10,000 kgs of plastics daily or 3.5millon kgs of plastics per year into fuel. We are saving 1.7million litres of fossil fuel and reducing carbon by 5million of Kg per annum.
Through our sister companies, who are handling Integrated Solid Waste Management Projects, we have access to convert daily 100,000 kgs of plastic to fuel or 36millon kg of plastics per annum. This will be equivalent to reducing 14million litres of high-speed diesel consumption and equivalent to reducing 40million tons of carbon per annum. 2DC will be investing in augmenting the production of alternate fuels.
“We are excited to be part of value chain that will reduce plastic waste successfully, reducing GHG emissions successfully and supporting government of India exchequer in reduction of purchase of fuels from international market. We want to show our future generations that we are responsible citizens and will develop and ensure the environment is managed simultaneously. We will hand a beautiful world to our next generation successfully” – Sheetal and Vikas Agarwal, Co-CEO 2DC, a subsidiary of Ideation 3x.