Compost pits for disposing sanitary waste
NEWDELHI: To better hygiene levels in its schools and proper disposal of sanitary pads, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has begun constructing compost pits in 28 senior secondary schools.
A council official said the process would help decompose sanitary pads in 180 days and the resultant mixture could be used in the school gardens. The first such pit has been constructed in NP Girls’ Senior Secondary School, Mandir Marg while work at two other schools— NP Bengali Girls Senior Secondary and NP Girls Secondary School at Havlock Square— will be completed soon.
This comes close on the heels of the civic body roping in an organisation to distribute sanitary pads. While initially the council proposed incinerators, the organisation claimed that their prod- uct was mostly biodegradable and could be easily decomposed in an enviornment-friendly manner.
“To verify the claim, the Central Institute of Plastic Engineering and Technology tested it in May. In its report, the institute certified that the sanitary pads are compostable and in 180 days over 90.38% of material can be decomposed,”said NDMC chairman Naresh Kumar.
For successful implementation of the project, the civic agency has shared a set of guidelines regarding how to make the compost pit, giving the dimensions of the pits and ingredients to be mixed together for preparing the compost. The NDMC’S initiative has come following the notification of the Solid waste management (SWM) rules, 2016, which stressed on proper disposal of used sanitary napkins and diapers so that they won’t end up at landfill sites.
Experts, however, warn that most sanitary products in the market contained plastic and super absorbent polymers, which will not degrade for many years.
Chitra Mukherjee, head of advocacy and outreach programme at Chintan, said, “Although composting is a better than incineration, the process just helps in shredding the plastic into small pieces because a majority of sanitary products use plastic. I think the civic agency should monitor the programme closely at one or two places. Based on the results they should take it ahead.”
The Central pollution Control Board (CBCB) had also released set of guidelines for disposal of five kind of sanitary or biomedical waste, including sanitary pads, diapers recently. It suggested deep burial for compostable sanitary pads. Composting is recommended for used paper, tissues, cloth-based absorbents and even some sanitary napkins (if they are made only of wood pulp and non-woven cotton).
While hospitals have their own incinerators or share facilities among themselves, educational institutions and domestic households end up disposing sanitary waste with wet waste. The waste, which does not end up in landfills-- end up in clogging drains, rivers and other water bodies, said experts.
“Unfortunately, despite the SWM rules in place companies are doing least under extended producer responsibility in sensitising public or using minimum plastic in sanitary products,” said Mukherjee.