The waste drop-off centre located below Kelki school in Thimphu will soon be upgraded into a high-tech waste segregation and recycling unit.
This is to tackle the issue of mixed dumping of wastes which makes collection, transportation and recycling difficult and near to impossible. Works to implement the project began yesterday with a joint seminar between Green Technology Center (GTC), Korea, National Environment Commission (NEC) and Thimphu Thromde.
“We have a waste drop-off centre in Thimphu near Kelki school. The centre currently is manually operated. We are planning to upgrade that with assistance from the Government of Korea through GTC Korea,” said Thinley Dorji, Chief Environment Officer, Waste Management Division, NEC.
More than 50 per cent of the kitchen or food wastes generated every day are dumped in the landfill along with other wastes according to the NEC. With support from GTC in Korea, conveyer belts, magnetic separators and collection bins will be installed at the drop-off centre to make collection, transportation and recycling of wastes convenient.
“First we will try to develop national guidelines for drop-off centres and also landfills as well. And also we want to try to do a technology demonstration in the drop-off centre of Thimphu city. We want to apply some advanced sorting facility in the drop-off centre and then we want to evaluate the technology with Bhutanese entities like research groups and NGO’s,” said Dukwoo Jun, a Senior Researcher for GTC, Korea.
If the pilot project becomes successful, NEC also has plans to replicate the idea in other districts as well. Similarly, the issues pertaining to landfills will also be addressed soon with technical and financial assistance from GTC.
“In each district we have landfills. Actually those are not proper landfills. It is more like an open dumping place. We don’t have proper leachate collection system and methane collection system. So those landfills have to be closed at some point of time. With their assistance and technical expertise and also some financial resources from them, we are developing a guideline for this landfill, basically a post-closure landfill guideline, the basic thing we need to do when we close a landfill,” added Thinley Dorji.
The drop-off centre up-gradation will be carried out at a cost of Nu 6 M and is expected to be completed by May next year. Thimphu thromde during the seminar also shared that 9 other drop-off centres will also be established soon in Thimphu.
Bhutan signed a Memoranda of Understanding with the Government of Korea to promote climate technology to achieve low carbon waste management in the respective countries.
Tshering Dendup
