Delhi: Solar powered centre to collect e-waste unveiled at Khan Market

The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), along with NGO Chintan, set up a solar-powered micro material recovery facility at Khan Market to reduce the burden on landfills by strengthening decentralised community-centric initiatives.

The initiative is a part of a plan to run eight decentralised centres across the NDMC areas. Each of these will be designed to tackle specific waste streams through collection, segregation, repair, reuse, upcycling and safe disposal, in line with Solid Waste Management Rules 2016.

These are dhalaos (public bathrooms) that have been converted into MMRF plus reduce, reuse, recycle centres. The facility will specialise in e-waste collection and their handover for disposal.


The site in Khan Market is located close to the parking for convenience and will facilitate the collection of waste such as old shoes, clothes, paper, books, domestic hazardous waste and, most importantly, various e-waste items.

"We had a facility here earlier, but now this is revamped properly. We have placed multiple boxes, specifying the items that can be dropped in each of them. Besides paper and mixed plastic, separate sections are made for dumping batteries, stereos, keyboards or tablets, wires and earphone chargers, considering all these electronic items are processed separately," an NGO representative told TOI.

"We also have a machine to compress plastic bottles. Collected and segregated waste will be transferred to registered processing units," the representative added.

NDMC chairman Keshav Chandra said, "We encourage NDMC waste generators to participate in this project by dropping off their waste or calling for a pickup."

The facility is installed with a 1kW solar panel at the entrance to run the fan and lights and the weighing machines at the centre.

"It will showcase how renewable, green energy can fight heat, improve health and also enable more efficient waste management," said Chaturvedi.

NDMC has come across many new waste streams, from textile waste to shoes, said medical officer of health Dr Shakuntala Srivastava.