Page 500 - AWSAR 2.0

476 || AWSAR Awarded Popular Science Stories - 2019
From Waste to Value: Use of Agro and Garden Waste for Gasification-based Community- level Cooking
Mr. Haseen Siddiqui*
Email: haseen011@gmail.com
Human beings, by nature, have a habit of bringing the things in use until and unless their values are deteriorated. Therefore,
from the point of view of human nature, waste is any discarded substance whose value is completely exhausted. On pondering over this behavior of humans, there is nothing wrong in quoting that humans are one of the major sources of waste generation, which makes the waste generation a very ancient process. In ancient days, the rate of waste generation was quite low because of many reasons such as limited human needs, low living standards, and lack of technological era. On the one hand, technological development has raised the living standard and made human life prosperous and flourishing; on the other hand, it has increased the rate of waste generation.
As per the recent data, about 521.95–759.2 kg per person per year of waste is generated by the developed countries, and about 109.5– 526.6 kg per person per year of waste is generated by the developing countries. The estimated value of current global municipal solid waste (MSW) generation rate is about 2 billion tons per year. India, a developing country, generates about 62 million tons of MSW per year with an annual growth rate of 4%. The significant portion of MSW (about 50%) consists of organic waste including waste collected from green campuses, gardens, parks, roadside trees, and forests.
In rural areas, people generally burn agro and garden waste, leading to the release of CO2, SOx, and NOx owing to the increasing air
* Mr. Haseen Siddiqui, PhD Scholar from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, is pursuing his research on “Experimental and Modeling Study of Downdraft Gasification Process for High Ash Feed Stocks”. His popular science story entitled “From Waste to Value: Use of Agro and Garden Waste for Gasification Based Community-Level Cooking” has been selected for AWSAR Award.