Lucknow Declared State’s First Zero Dump City

02 Jul 2025 CW Team

Lucknow has become Uttar Pradesh’s first officially certified “Zero Dump City” after all three processing lines at the Shivri solid waste treatment plant achieved full operation. The facility now handles the city’s entire daily load of roughly 2 100 metric tonnes, and has already removed two thirds of the vast legacy mound that once blighted the site.

Shivri began life in 2012 but stalled under two successive contractors, allowing a waste mountain to accumulate. A Chinese operator appointed in 2017 also failed to deliver, incurring penalties of about Rs 400 million.

Renewed momentum arrived in 2023 when the Lucknow Municipal Corporation, under the Swachh Bharat Mission, launched a Rs 960 million remediation project. Pune based Bhumi Green Energy took charge in January 2024, introducing microbial cultures to suppress odour and leachate, followed by air drying to speed processing. Each of the plant’s three units now handles 700 metric tonnes per day.

Sorted output is channelled into four streams:

fine soil for horticulture and farming;
refuse derived fuel from plastics and paper for cement kilns and paper mills;
coarse aggregate for land reclamation;
construction debris repurposed in local infrastructure schemes.

Coconut husks and certain plastics are fashioned into ropes, mats and coco peat. Performance is audited by IIT Roorkee and VJTI Mumbai, and the project is slated to add electricity generation once sufficient feedstock is secured.

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