ARTH GANGA INITIATIVE- ENVIRONMENT
News: First study on Indian sludge finds ‘high
potential’ for use as fertilizer
What is in the news?
● A
first of its kind analysis of the sludge found in Indian sewage treatment
plants (STP), set up to treat polluted water from the Ganga, found that most of
it had “high potential” for use as fertiliser.
CLASSIFICATION OF SLUDGES AND THEIR USAGES:
Treated
sludge can be classified as class A or
class B as per the standards of the United States Environmental Protection
Agency.
● Class
A being safe to be disposed of in the open and useful as organic fertilizer.
● Class
B means that the sludge can be used in “restricted” agricultural applications,
the edible parts of the crop not be exposed to the sludge-mixed soil, and
animals and people not come into extensive contact.
● India doesn’t yet have
standards classifying sludge as class A or B.
Study of IIT Roorkee:
A
study by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Roorkee found that most of
the sludge analysed after drying fell into the class B category.
1. Basic soil nutrients:
● Nitrogen
and phosphorus levels, the basic soil nutrients, were higher than those recommended by India’s fertilizer standards (FCO,
2009).
● However,
potassium levels of some sludges were less than recommended.
2. Organic carbon content:
● The
total organic carbon was more than 16%,
again higher than FCO recommendations, but the degree of pathogens as well as
heavy metal contamination was above the recommended fertilizer standards.
3. Calorific value:
● The
calorific value of sludge ranged from 1,000-3,500 kcal/kg. This is lower than the average calorific value
of Indian coal.
Go back to basics:
ARTH GANGA INITIATIVE:
● PM
Modi first introduced the concept during the first National Ganga Council meeting in Kanpur in 2019, where he
urged for a shift from Namami Gange,
the Union Government’s flagship project to clean the Ganga, to the model of ARTH
Ganga.
● One
of the measures, under the ‘ARTH Ganga’ (economic value from Ganga), is to
“monetise” and reuse treated wastewater and sludge.
FEATURES OF ARTH GANGA:
Under
ARTH Ganga, the government is working on six
verticals.