The cities of Tehran and Tabriz have been selected for implementing a pilot project to burn waste to generate electricity, Mehr news agency reported, citing municipality officials.
“The feasibility study for installing equipment for generating electricity from biomass in the two big Iranian cities is currently underway,” said Habibeh Harati, a deputy from the waste management department of Tabriz Municipality. “Upon the completion of the project, the municipality will no longer have to bury the garbage collected from across the city.”
As part of the project, a new power plant which will be established near Kahrizak – a suburban area and the capital of Kahrizak District, south of Tehran – will use the energy coming from burning the garbage to generate electricity, announced Alimohammad Shaeri, chairman of the Council of Environment and Sustainable Development.
Once the power plant starts operation, 3 megawatts of electricity will be produced per day from the incineration (burning waste) process, and the generated amount will be sold to the ministry of energy, said Shaeri.
The amount of electricity generated from waste is projected to reach 20 megawatts a day by the end of the second five-year plan of Tehran municipality (2018), added Shaeri.
Pointing to the advantages of the new power plant, he said that by burning the garbage, contamination of water and soil by the leachate - generated from decomposition of garbage - will be avoided. Besides, the collected waste will be used as a renewable source of energy for the new power plant, he added.
Tabriz Municipality is also planning to totally discard waste burying in the future, according to the CEO of the local waste management organization, which is a subsidiary of the municipality of Tabriz.
Telling of a new modern landfill that is being constructed for the city, Alireza Asghari said that 40 billion rials ($1.4 million) has been allocated to the construction of a well-equipped enclosed burn unit for garbage burning, in a bid to minimize the rate of waste burying.
The officials of Tabriz Municipality also said the organization “cares about the health of its employees.” Harati said that, for example, the organization arranges regular and precise physical examinations on the employees.
Besides, she noted that Tabriz Municipality is the first organization in Iran that has applied the Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) system.
HSE departments are entities commonly found within companies that consider environmental protection, occupational health and safety at work as important as providing quality products, and which therefore have managers and departments responsible for these issues.
