Maharashtra government would be setting up circular economy parks, where waste would be converted into value-added products like biogas to flatten the spiralling pollution graph, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Monday.“Many such parks will be established in the state and one of them would be in Vidarbha, probably Nagpur.According to a TOI report, parks would be established in Mumbai, Pune and Konkan as well.
Earlier, addressing citizens at the foundation-laying ceremony of Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s (NMC) Rs 300cr integrated solid waste management project in collaboration with the Netherlands-based Sustainable Business Development (SusBDe) company at Bhandewadi, the Southwest Nagpur MLA said such projects were needed to establish circular economy parks across the state. Nagpur will be the first city in India to produce 27 million cubic metres of compound biogas every year.Attributing Nagpur’s low Swachh ranking to the absence of such projects, the senior BJP leader said the government and NMC had earlier tried hard to set up such projects but failed. “Nagpur has developed rapidly in the last decade under the able leadership of Union minister Nitin Gadkari. We, however, lacked a project to take care of garbage disposal. I am confident that after completion of the project, Nagpur would be one of India’s most sustainable cities,” he said.Recalling kicking off waste-disposal ventures in 250 of 350 cities in the state when he was CM between 2014 and 2019, he said Nagpur was the first to start an innovative project of power generation from sewage water. “After the pilot project launched with Gadkari’s efforts became successful with the private investment, it was replicated by many cities,” said Fadnavis.