KATUNAYAKE -- While other countries progressively tackle the garbage problem and manage their waste, Sri Lanka is still grappling with the issue and in the ‘hullabaloo’ the word ‘sustainability’ is used to the extent that it has lost its meaning in Sri Lanka. In many instances sustainability is taken out of context with no consideration to the human factor.
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Separating the waste. Pix by J. Weerasekera
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When Holcim Lanka Ltd started its cement manufacturing operations in Sri Lanka in 2002, it followed up with a business wing called ‘Geocycle’ on 22 March 2003 establishing a facility to process and transform waste into energy. Holcim’s core business is essentially the manufacture of cement which is spread all over the world in around 80 countries.
Though cement manufacture does not generate waste, the company as a major contribution to the society all over the world is collecting waste of other industries and workplaces to strike a balance to give back to nature in lieu of what they extract from it. In this manner their contribution to the nature in Sri Lanka is enormous.
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| Looking for strips of cloth |
The company takes over the waste of as many as 125 large industries and manufacturers in Sri Lanka and so far they have converted 185,562 metric tons of industrial waste which is highly pollutant and which otherwise would have been dumped in the environment and affected even the underground water-table. Their exercise has a triple effect – waste management, contribution to cleaner environment and with the generation of energy from the waste, reduce the consumption of fossil fuel and by that reduce emission of greenhouse gas.
Geocycle last week organized Geo Responsibility Awards 2011 in Colombo and among these 125 organizations that provide waste for Geocycle - Maliban Biscuit Manufacturers (Pvt) Ltd won the Gold Award in the category of Total Waste Management and in the same category the runner- up was Ceylon Tobacco Co PLC.
At the ceremony, Manilal Fernando, Chairman, Holcim Lanka said that they are managing others waste and said that in this manner Geocycle has rendered its services not only by providing waste management solutions, but in addition invested Rs 200 million to build up a pre-processing facility at FTZ Katunayake.
This week a team from the Business Times visited the facility at Katunayake to understand what goes on there and create some public awareness.
Geocycle has undertaken to operate the huge waste dump in the Zone. All the waste material of all the factories in the Zone are discharged into this dump. Though the dump is operated inside the Geocycle facility they have allowed a number of poor people from outside to select whatever items they could reuse like pieces of cloth, waste paper etc – a scavengers’ paradise where so many people have made riches and run families.
H.W.Upul, a father of three from Heenatiyana has been sorting pieces of cardboard and paper for the last 14 years and his entire family and other expenses are maintained with the income derived from this KFTZ garbage dump – which has now become the Geocycle garbage dump. He operates with a three wheel tractor and he said that his income per day averaged to about Rs 1,500.
D.G.M. Mallika from Ja-Ela has two sons and she too is a scavenger sorting pieces of cloth and paper and she collects one bag and carries it in the bus. She says she earns around Rs 350 per day. The dump operates from morning till 2.30 pm and there are about 50 or more people scanning through this huge garbage heap for ‘Gold’. By allowing the people to make use of whatever they could ferret out from the garbage dump, a large number of families make their living and the government could take a cue as to how successfully garbage could be handled.
Indeed at the end of the day these ‘scavengers’ remove as much as 52% of the heap and Geocycle is satisfied with the balance for their waste management process. Thus the company follows the accepted criteria of – avoid waste, minimize waste, reuse waste, recycle waste and last core-process waste – the last one Geocycle undertakes.
Asela Iddawela, General Manager, Geocycle told the Business Times that they are the pioneering waste management company which offers professional and environmentally- friendly waste disposal of major industrialists in Sri Lanka.
He said that co-processing the method used by them for waste disposal, is a globally established best practice to dispose hazardous wastes. He said that co-processing is technically advanced and superior to land filling and incineration, as no residue will be left out.
He said that co-processing is recognized and encouraged by international institutions such as World Health Organization, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Hazardous Chemical and Waste conventions, the Basel Convention, The European Cement Association, and GTZ (German Technical Corporation).
He said that Geocycle in turn was awarded the Carbon Neutral Certificate, by Carbon Neutral Company, UK whichwas presented by Stephen Huber, its CEO after a brief presentation on the Carbon Calculations and the procedure of such calculations by Subramaniam Eassuwaren, Director, Carbon Consulting Company.
He said that they are adopting best international practices to be the only institution to be officially certified for disposing of hazardous waste in Sri Lanka and in addition they are listed as having a competent laboratory, by the Central Environmental Authority. Geocycle continues to be the only institution to be officially certified for disposing of hazardous waste in Sri Lanka, in addition to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OSHAS 18001.
At the facility site, Ms Dharshani Lahandapura, Communications Coordinator and B. Batheegama, Technical Support Engineer assisted the journalists in eliciting necessary information. Mr Batheegama said that Geocycle has the capacity to dispose of a diverse range of waste – non-hazardous waste such as rice husk and saw dust as well as hazardous waste such as industrial sludge, ink, dyes, mineral oil and oil contaminated wastes, solvent, paints, lacquers, varnish, agro-chemicals, expired pharmaceuticals and other wastes.
In addition to the operation of the garbage dump the company also has a huge store where industrial and hazardous waste is processed. The waste is sorted out, packed in bags and then transported to Holcim’s Puttalam kiln.
He said the Katunayake facility converts the raw waste streams into a standard form and fed to their cement kiln in Puttalam. There are three huge pits to pour industrial sludge and they are processed in a processing plant to mix with saw-dust – a process called impregnation. The facility also acts as an intermediate storage location for scheduled waste until it is delivered to the Puttalam plant.
Ms Lahandapura said that the only analytical laboratory in Sri Lanka operated by Geocycle located at their Puttalam Plant provides analytical reports for conventional and waste derived fuels.
She said that co-processing is a technology used for thermal destruction of hazardous waste and is a combination of two processes undertaken simultaneously without compromising the efficiency of either process and is successfully practiced with positive results by the United States, Japan and the EU countries for the last 30 years.
She said that the contribution it makes to the environment is enormous where the process decreases the amount of natural resources that are taken from the earth; lowers the carbon dioxide intensity from facilities that use co-processed waste as fuel; reduces methane from landfills among other things.
While waste management of various industries in Sri Lanka has been a perennial problem with some state agencies responsible to find meaningful solutions to the waste management and garbage disposal, corporate entities are forging ahead in picking up modern technologies to solve the problem and come closer to nature.
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