By Md Aynal Haque

RAJSHAHI, Aug 12, 2023 (BSS) - Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) has been planning for modernization of its wastes with the main thrust of ensuring a clean, tidy and odorless environment through alleviating harmful effects of wastes.

It's also intended to build up an effective waste management system through modernizing collection, transportation, removal, recycling, reuse and dumping besides multidimensional use of wastes from reuse.
 
To attain the cherished goals, the city corporation is now on the way of adopting a project titled "Modernization of waste management in Rajshahi City" as it's mandated to ensure odorless environment everywhere in the city like other cities in the country.

Around 104.33 acres of land at Baya-Duary area has been selected as site of the proposed project as there is no residence around the area.

The proposed project has provision of various physical infrastructural development, particularly hygienic landfill, waste plants, approach road for recycling plants and treatment plants, land development, boundary wall, slaughterhouse, secondary transfer station and incineration plant.

The city is seen facing ever-growing environmental issues because waste production is increasing gradually due to rapid urbanization and population growth.
 
As there is no effective management of increased wastes, the city is continuously creating an unhygienic and gradually becoming inappropriate for residence.
 
Officials concerned said the city corporation is producing around 440 tons of waste every day at present and the figure will increase to 750 tons and 1,500 tons by 2031 and 2041 respectively.

RCC Chief Conservancy Officer Sheikh Mamun said they collect 320 tons of wastes from households, 24 tons from institutions, 79 tons from commercial and market areas, eight tons from roads and nine tons from others every day.
 
After collection from house to house, the wastes are piled into the secondary transfer station and finally transferred directly to landfills by drum trucks till 11 pm.

He also said they have around 1,377 conservancy workers engaged for the purposes.

Sheikh Mamun said the household wastes are mostly organic putrescent and reusable, while the wastes collected from institutions, commercial and other places transferred to landfills in daytime.

At present, 12.02 acres of land is being used as a landfill which is completely filled right now and the piled wastes have made a hill like heap over the landfill.

As there are no more places left in the landfill city wastes are being dumped into the pit beside the nearby bypass road causing environmental pollution in the area badly.

Lack of recycling wastes has become the main reason behind the rapid fill up of the landfill. There is an urgent need of setting up an updated and hygienic new landfill for removing the ever-growing produced wastes properly since there is no scope to dump those.

Collection and transportation of human fecal sludge under an effective and upgraded management has become an urgent need. There is scope of producing biogas and fuel from collected sludge using modernized plants.

To overcome the problem, a modernized eco-friendly incineration plant needs to be built and the management of collecting, transporting, recycling and destroying wastes needs to be upgraded.

Locals said many house owners dump human excreta directly into drain while cleaning out septic tanks and many of those and soak wells are connected to drain polluting the nearby Barnai river.

This is the high time to build a treatment plant for purifying the wastewater in Dargapara and Kalpona primary drains.

Sheikh Mamun said they are sincerely trying to take effective measures for managing the collection, transportation and dumping of wastes properly.

It would be possible to produce organic fertilizer and various usable products from the organic wastes through sorting under effective management. Moreover, it would be possible to produce biogas and electricity to a little extent.

He also said a plan has been made to treat the waste water of the two major primary drains before throwing them into the river.