THERE’S GOLD IN THEM HILLS The City (with JICA help) hopes to partner with the private sector and turn a problem into an opportunity

27 December, 2009 - Work will begin shortly to expand Thimphu city’s garbage landfill lifespan by, at most, another four years.

The existing landfill is currently “overflowing” and should have been closed eight years ago, according to Pema Dorji, an environmental officer for Thimphu city corporation (TCC). He added that the current landfill is simply a gorge with a wall around it and that, when the wall was built, officials did not expect the waste to even reach the height of the full height of the wall. Today, waste at the Memelakha landfill is about 30-40 m above the highest point of the wall.

The landfill at Memelakha has been used since the early 1990s to dispose of Thimphu city’s waste. Today, Thimphu city generates around 50 MT (metric tonnes) of waste daily, of which 25 MT or approximately 540 truckloads is transported to the Memelakha landfill. No data is available on Memelakha’s capacity or the total amount of waste currently occupying the landfill.

Some smaller sections of the landfill currently remain unused for waste disposal. TCC will convert these unused areas, some of which are used for access roads, into 6 m deep pits to transfer waste from the main dumping area. According to Pema Dorji, this waste will be removed, compacted, and then dumped into the new pits. Such a move to use every available space reflects the desperation of Thimphu’s burgeoning waste disposal problem.

TCC will also be pursuing other methods, such as partnering with private companies to minimise the amount of waste reaching the Memelakha landfill by next year. Pema Dorji said that scrap dealers could use 90 percent of the daily waste being transported to Memelakha.

TCC has also identified a new area for a new landfill to be established in a few years in Serbithang. But Pema Dorji said that this required “a huge investment and we don’t have the budget.” He said that, if planned and proposed measures, such as waste segregation and recycling, to mitigate the amount of waste reaching landfills is successful, then the new landfill could simply become a back up facility.

TCC is being technically assisted by a Japanese NGO, JICA.