Conclusions

Urban India has niches where single type biodegradable materials are discharged in appreciable quantities what one could indicate as micro-scale point sources. Typical biodegradable packing materials used in urban India such as paddy straw, cane trash and shredded paper as well as residue from street-side fruit juice vendors (mixed fruit waste and sugarcane bagasse) have potential to be used as sole feedstocks for decentralized processing of such MSW to biogas and compost. Setting up decentralized anaerobic digesters within urban locations in India captures and processes these fermentable wastes near the site of generation and has the potential to obviate daily MSW collection and transport. This approach reduces costs of solid waste management and has the potential to make the overall process sustainable. There is potential for the re-use of digested residue as precolonized methanogen support and increase local value addition to biogas.

Acknowledgements

A part of the research effort was carried out with infrastructure created at CST under the Indo-Norwegian Environment Program (INEP) of Govt. of Karnataka. Ms Vijayachamundeeswari worked as visiting student with financial assistance from the annual grant to CES from the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. The authors gratefully acknowledge this help.