Only about 15 tonnes of construction waste from the city is making it to the recycling plant instead of the targeted 500 tonnes a day, a senior official told mayor Firhad Hakim on Friday.
A construction and demolition waste recycling plant, set up by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), was inaugurated in April. The plant was supposed to make paver blocks from the waste generated in the real estate sector.
Hakim, who was informed about the problem during the weekly phone-in programme Talk To Mayor, said he believed a bulk of the construction and demolition waste was being sent out of the city to fill up water bodies and a section of builders was involved in this.
Filling up water bodies or shrinking their size by dumping bricks and other construction waste has been an old strategy and continues to this day, even within Kolkata, said civic officials.
They said if the waste was sent to the recycling plant, it would stop their use in illegally filling up the water bodies and also prevent air pollution. The waste when dumped on the roadside or along the edges of waterbodies keeps sending dust particles into the air.
The issue cropped up when a caller in the weekly phone-in programme complained about a dilapidated structure in his neighbourhood.
A senior official said that such buildings could be demolished and the waste sent to the recycling plant that was almost lying idle in the absence of enough raw material.
Hakim then asked another official how much waste going to the plant in New Town’s Patharghata. “Only about 15 tonnes a day. The plant has the capacity to process 500 tonnes of construction and demolition waste in a day,” he told the mayor.
“What happens is that the waste is sent outside Kolkata in trucks and then used to fill up water bodies. Some builders are also involved in this,” Hakim said in the presence of senior officials of the KMC.
A large chunk of the construction and demolition waste generated in the city is also sent to Dhapa waste disposal ground.
Construction and demolition waste includes bricks, cement, mortar, sand and concrete. Iron reinforcements will not be sent to the plant. Paver blocks, bricks, kerb stones and some road construction materials can be made from the waste.
Civic sources had earlier said that the KMC can buy the paver blocks, which are used to pave footpaths, from the company. There is a demand for paver blocks as many large apartment complexes use them in common walking areas.
KMC sources said there hardly has been any public awareness campaign by the civic body so people undertaking repairs or demolition or constructing a new building will send the waste through the KMC. The civic body is charging owners or builders a fee for the collection of construction and demolition waste from the site while approving a building plan.
“The price that a builder of large construction would make by selling off the waste in the market is more than what they paid to the KMC,” said an official.
There is still no system to check if the owner or builder was actually sending the waste to the recycling plant or disposing of it by other means.