By A Staff Reporter

Kathmandu, Feb. 9: Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) has said that it would collect only solid wastes through a segregation process to identify degradable and non-degradable ones after the under-construction Bancharedanda sanitary landfill site comes into operation.
The KMC has been dumping all types of wastes generated from all the 18 municipalities of the Kathmandu Valley at the Sisdole Landfill Site for the past 14 years.
The Sisdole site was initially used for dumping Kathmandu’s waste just for four years. KMC is now bringing a post-closure programme at Sisdole to completely stop dumping solid waste there as waste
handling capacity of the area has already saturated.
Head of Environment Department at KMC Hari Kumar Shrestha said that KMC would not take all types of solid wastes generated in the valley to Bancharedanda for dumping.
“If we do the same thing as we did at Sisdole, the Bancharedanda site too could not be used for more than nine or 10 years,” Shrestha said.
“Segregation of solid waste right from the
kitchen of our households is required, and must be done as it would be helpful in turning our solid waste into money,” Shrestha said.
Meanwhile, Dhundi Raj Pathak, a solid waste management specialist, geo-technical and geo-environmental engineer, suggested that the KMC should not dump all types of solid wastes at Bancharedanda if it had to run and use it for over 50 years.
Pathak said that the KMC, as of today, had not been collecting wastes in segregated form from households and its staff members were not telling the locals to segregate them.
There are a few locals who segregate solid wastes right at their homes but when garbage collectors come, they put both types of wastes in the same truck, Pathak said.
He said that the Valley denizens produce 1,045 tons of wastes every day. According to Pathak, about 90 per cent of garbage collected from the valley can be reused and decomposed to make compost and only 10 per cent of the solid waste produced from factories, hospitals, and industries that does not decompose should be taken to Bancharedanda.
Pathak said that at present, the KMC and their private sector waste carrying contractors do not have a provision to segregate solid wastes from the households.
“Garbage trucks of KMC and private companies come to our doorsteps twice a week, but they don’t collect it separately as they don’t have such provision as of now,” he said.
In the DPR of the Bancharedanda Landfill Site, there is a plan for a separate compost plant, chemical filtering plant and its reuse mechanism, said Pathak.
The Department of Urban Development is currently constructing Bancharedanda Landfill Site which it is supposed to complete by May 13, 2020. But only 30 per cent work has completed so far.
Padam Kumar Mainali, Deputy Director General and chief of Bancharedanda Landfill Site construction project of the Department of Urban Development, said if the Department could not complete the project in the given deadline, the project’s term would be extended as per the Public Procurement Act.
“Although the construction work on the project is not making the desired progress, we are committed to complete it at the earliest possible,” Mainali said.
He said if the media started writing negative news about the project, then there will be a pressure to the field workers and the whole project team to carry out further work.