BIOTECH BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES IN WASTE MANAGEMENT Almitra H Patel Member, Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste Management in Class 1 Cities in India almitrapatel@rediffmail.com www.almitrapatel.com

BIOCULTURES ARE A SUNRISE BUSINESS A true story : yesterday a Delhi owner of 350 STPs handed a Freedom Park stall-owner a cheque for Rs 10 crore to give him all-India rights to his formula which saves 90% power in STPs. The inventor will probably refuse the offer as he wants his knowledge used for society. Truly, biocultures are indispensable for solid and liquid waste management.

COMPOSTING BIOCULTURES ARE A NECESSITY IN TROPICAL COUNTRIES They are little used in the West’s cooler climate where food waste is collected weekly and does not putrefy as fast as ours does. It is absolutely vital to bring down costs drastically for their effective use. A high price of Rs 50 per ton of waste would cost BBMP Rs1.5 lac a day, Rs 5.47 crore a year.

TYPES OF BIOCULTURES IN USE Aerobic for wind-row composting of both fresh waste and ‘bio-mined’ wind-rows of old waste for site reclamation. Anaerobic for bio-methanation and energy-saving plus sludge digestion in STPs. Facultative for in-situ digestion of septic tank sludge, lake restoration & in-situ treat- ment of polluted storm-water drains which are India’s new ‘perennial rivers’ today that we will need to mine for usable water.

EXPLORE USE OF WASTES AS COMPOSTING BIOCULTURES Fermentative biocultures like ‘EM’ are mostly lactobacillus. Odor is controlled, waste is ‘pickled’ as volumes reduce. Molasses or jaggery water or even rice-washing water are used to ‘multiply’ it. Try waste whey from dairies, spent wash from distilleries, brewery waste etc This can save effluent treatment costs and avoid use of precious groundwater

DEMAND IS ENORMOUS ! Increasing urbanisation & population growth generates staggering quantities of solid and liquid waste, both crying out for treatment. ‘Waste To Energy’ is thermodynamically unviable with India’s low-calorific-value wastes and has become a scam. So MSW Rules 2000 require cities to ‘minimise waste to landfill’ through ‘biological stabilisation’ of organic waste