Assam to team up with Oil India to turn trash into biofuel in five cities

In a major green push on World Environment Day, the state government announced a collaboration with Oil India Limited (OIL) to convert municipal waste into biofuel in five cities across the state — Guwahati, Silchar, Tezpur, Dibrugarh, and Tinsukia.

Speaking at an event held at Srimanta Sankardev Kalakshetra on Thursday, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the initiative aims to repurpose plastic and other municipal waste to produce clean energy.

“I believe we will be able to collect more and more plastic waste and hand it over to Oil India, which will convert it into biofuel in these five cities,” Sarma said, adding that his government will initiate the process with OIL in the next couple of days.

The partnership aligns with OIL’s broader initiative to establish 25 Compressed Biogas (CBG) plants across India under the aegis of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. These plants will use municipal solid waste, agricultural residue, and other organic feedstock to produce compressed biogas.

Earlier in October 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation for four such CBG plants by OIL in Guwahati, Jorhat, Sivasagar, and Tinsukia. Each facility is expected to process 125 tonnes of waste daily and generate around 2 tonnes of compressed biogas, using advanced zero liquid discharge systems to ensure minimal environmental impact.

Shifting focus to the state’s efforts to curb single-use plastic, the Chief Minister reiterated Assam’s commitment to a plastic-free future. He noted that the sale of plastic water bottles below 1 litre had already been banned, though larger bottles remain exempt due to economic considerations.

“I wanted to ban bottles up to 1 litre, but local entrepreneurs informed us that there are nearly 600 mineral water units with outstanding loans. To avoid hurting their livelihood, we settled on banning only 500 ml bottles,” Sarma told the press.

He added that Assam is aligning itself with the Centre’s national mission to eliminate plastic waste. “The Union government is taking concrete steps, and we too will carry forward this green pledge,” he said.

This article has been republished from The Assam Tribune.