The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has sought land from the Delhi Development Authority and the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board to build waste-processing plants as it struggles to manage the capital's daily garbage output, PTI reported.Delhi generates about 13,500 tonnes of municipal waste every day, but the MCD processes only 57 per cent of it. The remaining 5,800 tonnes, or about 43 per cent, is left untreated and sent to the city's saturated landfill sites.An MCD official told the news agency that the civic body had identified four locations for the proposed facilities: Ghummanhera and Kharkhari Nahar in the Najafgarh zone, and Rani Khera and Sultanpur Dabas in the Narela zone.

The corporation wrote to the DDA on September 28 seeking land for the plants.Officials said the MCD had also identified land under its ownership for waste-processing facilities as part of efforts to increase the city's treatment capacity. The corporation has been processing accumulated garbage through bio-mining at its landfill sites.

However, fresh waste continues to be dumped there, making it difficult to prevent new garbage mounds from forming and increasing the need for more processing capacity.In June, the MCD approved five waste-processing projects worth about Rs 596 crore. The projects, proposed at Bhalswa, Okhla, Singhola, Ghazipur and Narela-Bawana, will have a combined capacity of 5,900 tonnes a day. “The corporation has been carrying out bio-mining of legacy waste at Delhi's landfill sites for the past several years.

However, thousands of tonnes of fresh waste continue to be dumped every day, creating the risk of new garbage mountains. To address this challenge, we have prepared a long-term strategy,” an official told PTI.Delhi has four waste-to-energy plants with a combined capacity of 6,550 tonnes a day.

However, a composting plant at Okhla, which can handle 200 tonnes a day, has remained closed for years because of delays in its proposed conversion into a bio-CNG facility.The MCD is seeking more land and developing additional waste-processing projects to treat a larger share of Delhi's daily garbage and reduce the flow of fresh waste to landfill sites.- Ends