WASTE SEGREGATION AND TREATMENT USING BLACK SOLDIER FLY LARVAE AS BIOLOGICAL AGENTS

Abstract

The population explosion creating a fast shift to urbanization has stressed and polluted most of the prime resources for life sustenance. Waste management and sanitation facilities are two such stressed wings of most municipalities worldwide experiencing rapid urbanization. Sustainability has been at the center of the stage for all the technocrats and policymakers while ensuring both these vital facilities of waste management and sanitation. At least the twelve sustainable development goals include sustainable waste management as its integral target. The sixth sustainable development goal is framed to ensure clean water and sanitation for all by the year 2030. The biggest bottleneck faced by most municipalities in developing and underdeveloped countries is the unsegregated nature of municipal solid waste. The municipalities fail to provide requisite treatment to such unsegregated municipal solid waste, leading to dumping it in open sites or controlled sites. Such indiscriminate dumping fails to recover value buried inside these wastes and creates pollution in some or the other form. While waste to energy is a viable option to treat unsegregated municipal solid waste with low moisture content, waste having high moisture content cannot be dealt with this treatment option. For e.g. Indian unsegregated municipal solid waste has a high amount of moisture content. So, an important question here: is there any suitable waste treatment option that can sustainably treat unsegregated municipal solid waste with high moisture content? On-site sanitation systems have been addressing 2.7 billion people worldwide. This number is projected to grow to 5 billion by 2030. In India, 65% of the population is served by some or the other on-site sanitation system. So, approximately 10,493 tons/day of human faeces is being generated from on-site sanitation facilities in India. However, despite such a massive influx in such facilities under the Swachh Bharat Mission of the government, there is an immense crisis of safe, sustainable and affordable treatment of this generated human faecal sludge. While this waste material can be a possible resource for revenue generation, it is crudely dumped, creating unhygienic and sanitary conditions. So, the question here is: is there any suitable human faecal material treatment technology that can be affordable as well as economically sustainable?