Cleaning chennai’s largest toxic dump yard

Kannadapalayam, the dumping site in Tambaram, Chennai, is the most toxic dump in the entire capital of Tamil Nadu. Every day, over three hundred tons of garbage are transported to the site, which can only hold one hundred and ten tons.

The other tons of trash simply sit there, waiting to be burned. The decades-old dump has produced harmful emissions for a long time, such as methane gas, which contributes to the buildup of greenhouse gasses in Earth’s atmosphere.

The site causes local problems as well, since the people who live around the site have had to cope with the smoke and stench of the burning garbage for years.

Several attempts have been made to remove the garbage, ban garbage burning, and close up the dump, but none of these attempts have been successful.

However, the Tambaram municipality has now been ordered by the National Green Tribunal to clear out the Kannadapalayam dump.

This cleanup will be done with a new technology called bio-mining, which is much more efficient than the other methods that were previously attempted.

The bio-mining will be done by placing an automatic machine near the dump, which will separate the combustible materials from the non-combustible materials. The bio-culture will then be sprayed for pre-stabilization, which helps degrade any material that has not already been biodegraded.

After the material is sprayed, it will be sent to cement factories, which will use the material as an alternate fuel. All of the non-combustible materials will be dumped back at the site, since they can decay more easily and also maintain the content of carbon.

The removal of the current heap of trash from the land will be done within a year’s time.

When this process starts, the people living near the dump will soon be living cleaner and more pleasant lives.

Additionally, the clearing of this dump will help lower the emissions of harmful gasses into our atmosphere.

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