LAHORE: The Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) has failed to run its compost (organic fertilizer) plant according to the targets set by the administration, Pakistan Today has observed.
Moreover, the LWMC management has not gotten the registration of fertilizer brand name Khad Beliya.
The LWMC had inaugurated the said compost plant on November 25, 2016, to transform the organic waste into organic fertilizer at Mehmood Booti, the old dumping site of the company. The plant was termed as the first state of the art plant of its type in Pakistan, and it was also claimed that it was a step towards environmental sustainability.
Initially, in 2006, the City District Government Lahore (CDGL) with the partnership of Lahore Compost (private) Limited put efforts to run compost plant, installed by Saif Group, at the same venue to produce fertilizer. According to the information available with Pakistan Today, the Saif group had imported the plant from Belgium which had a capacity to transform around 1,000 tonnes of organic waste into 250 tonnes of organic fertilizer per day.
Composting is the controlled decomposition of organic materials, such as leaves, grass, food scraps and other municipal wastes, by microorganisms. The result of this decomposition process is compost – a crumbly, earthy-smelling, soil-like material. The composition of solid waste found in various counties/cities varies considerably.
Saif Group halted its operation after not achieving the set targets within a couple of years.
According to the LWMC officials, the company collects around 6,500 tonnes of waste from the city per day. This waste includes garbage, household waste and organic waste.
An official in LWMC informed that the Saif Group was facing various issues regarding the collection of organic waste because at that time there was no proper mechanism of collecting waste from the city. They added that last year, the group’s management contacted the LWMC and offered to take over the control of the plant.
“LWMC bought the plant including its machinery and decided to functionalize it using its own resources,” he said.
At the time of inauguration, the company officials announced that the plant will initially start transforming 50 tonnes of waste per day, which was planned to scale up to 500 tonnes per day by March 2017. However, despite the passage of a year, the compost plant could not achieve its set target.
Talking to Pakistan Today, the manager of the plant Yasir Ayub said that various factors were involved for failure to achieve targets. He said that company started production of compost fertilizer according to set parameters and was hopeful in getting an approval of Punjab Agriculture Department (PAD), but later it changed the parameters.
“Initially these parameters were set to add 15 per cent of organic material but later these were changed to add 25 per cent,” he said adding that the company had again sent its samples for approval. Ayub further said that after resolving the issue, the company will get the registration of its brand name Khad Beliya and would also be able to run the plant at its full capacity.
