Even as the Chennai Corporation is working on a plan to generate power from garbage, environmentalists have warned that any move to obtain power by burning wastes could prove dangerous to the environment.
This comes in the wake of incinerator firms targeting Asia after intense opposition in the US and Europe.
Noted environmentalist Nityanand Jayaram told City Express that the Chennai Corporation was studying ways to dispose of wastes at the dumping yards in Kodangaiyur and Perungudi and had even sent a team to Singapore and China to study waste disposal. However, any move to burn waste would harm the environment, he added.
Corporation officials allayed the fears of NGOs and residents stating that they would go only for a technology that is certified by the Pollution Control Board and satisfied euro norms.
Annie Leonard, noted environmentalist, said that incinerator firms were targeting Asia after intense public opposition in the United States and Europe and residents from Chennai should oppose any such move to set up incinerators in the city.
“The US environmental protection agency has found medical and municipal waste incineration to be the top source of severely toxic dioxin that can have harmful effects on reproduction, nervous and immune system. There is no good technology to burn waste,” she added.
However, Corporation officials said there are now new er technologies for safe waste disposal.
But with stiff opposition from environmentalists and pressure groups, the city has to look for an alternative to dispose of more than 4,500 metric tonnes of waste.
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