Direction: Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow by choosing the correct/most appropriate options.

All three landfills in Delhi receive fresh waste daily. In 2021, fresh waste dumped at Ghazipur was more than the legacy waste processed that year.

The deadline to remediate the landfills are, however, not a few decades away. Ghazipur is to achieve 100% remediation by December 2024 and Okhla by March 2023, going by action plans that the MCDs has submitted to the NGT.

“The fresh waste disposed of at the site while biomining of legacy waste is done turns it into a vicious cycle,” said Richa Singh, Programme Officer, Waste Management Programme. As of February this year, the total capacity for processing municipal waste in the city is 5,550 tonnes per day. The processing capacity has not increased since 2016.

“While remediating landfills, waste processing infrastructure needs to be strengthened so that no organic waste reaches the landfill site,” said Suneel Pandey, Director of Environment and Waste Management.

“This situation is particular to Delhi. When remediation of waste is being done, there is no alternative site for disposal of waste, and daily waste generation is accommodated at the same site. It would be up to the DDA and the Delhi government to allocate space for the corporations to handle fresh waste so that the remediation of landfills can be done. The remediation is slow, and will have to be done in mission mode,” he said. 

Why do landfills catch fire? The haphazard dumping of all types of waste at these sites means that there have been recurrent fires. There were four instances of fires at landfills so far this summer as temperatures began to rise — three at Ghazipur and one at Bhalswa that have been difficult to douse. The blaze at Bhalswa, which broke out on April 26, raged for days. This is because the anaerobic decomposition of organic waste at the landfill generates heat and methane which is combustible.