Making Lord’s abode clean and green

Tirupati: One of the tough tasks the Tirumala- Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) facing in Tirumala, the abode of Lord Venkateswara is handling the waste being generated daily on the hilltop temple town.

About 40 tonnes of solid waste are being generated on normal days and it will go up to 60 tonnes during peak days. The general composition of garbage is 91% of organic waste and remaining in-organic waste consists of plastics, glass, metals, paper cardboards, leather and cloth.

It is needless to say that the generation of waste on the hill town is on the rise with the pilgrim flow increasing at the rate of 15 per cent, making the task of handling the waste more difficult for the TTD administering the famed Lord Venkateswara temple.

Against this backdrop, the TTD as an effective method for handling the waste set up a municipal solid waste (MSW) management plant at Kakulathippa in Tirumala hills in June last year for manufacturing manure from solid waste.

The TTD entrusted the operation and maintenance of the plant through national-level bidding to a Bengaluru-based Bright Waste Technologies (BWT) for manufacturing manure from the solid waste as part of its long-term strategy for effective handling of the increasing waste generation on the hills.

The firm owned by a woman entrepreneur Alapati Renuka Devi in the last one year handled about 11,000 tonnes of waste for producing the manure, giving much relief to the TTD.

“In normal course the yield of manure from the waste is maximum from 8 per cent to 10 per cent but we enhanced it to 15 per cent with mixing the waste with culture to boost up the production with the activation of many types of bacteria with the latest techniques,’’ said BWT chief executive officer Madamanchi Ramesh Babu.

Speaking to The Hans India, Ramesh Babu said the process of making manure from waste is elaborate, time consuming and intricate. Due to Tirumala climatic conditions the end product takes 45-60 days against 25 days down the hills of Tirupati, adding more to our expenditure, he averred.

The waste after weighing cut into pieces taken to a platform for drying in heaps arranged in layers for mixing the bio-culture for turning the waste into manure which will be ready after drying for about a month.

TTD sends daily about 30 tonnes mostly wet waste after segregation weeding out the plastic and other non-degradable waste, to the plant for manure production. In fact the operation of the plant is not profitable to us but because of our deep devotion to Lord Venkateswara we are running it as our humble service to the Lord, Ramesh Babu said informing that the firm incurring Rs 9,000 for processing of each tonne of waste but getting payment Rs 4,800 per tonne only for the manure.

TTD Superintendent Engineer Ramachandra Reddy said that the MSW plant proving immensely beneficial as it handles effectively more than 75 per cent of the daily waste generated in Tirumala helping the TTD administration to keep the hill town more clean winning many national awards.