New Delhi, Feb 2 : As part of furthering the 'Green Growth' agenda, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs partnered with Engineers India Limited (EIL) to develop Waste to Energy and bio-methanation projects in cities with a population of million plus. In the 'Green Growth' segment, 500 new 'Waste to Wealth' plants will be established under the GOBARdhan scheme for promoting the circular economy. These will include 200 compressed bio-gas plants, 75 in urban areas, 300 community or cluster-based plants, at a total investment of Rs 10,000 crore. Officials said that the thrust on sustainable solid waste management has been strengthened under the ambit of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, with the overall vision of creating garbage-free cities. Focusing on this objective, the Ministry of Urban Affairs has decided to set up large-scale solid waste processing facilities in million plus cities. There are 59 million plus cities in India, like Lucknow, Kanpur, Bareilly, Nasik, Thane, Nagpur, Gwalior, Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore to name a few. For management of the organic/wet fraction of municipal solid waste, bio-methanation plants have been proposed in these million plus cities. Waste to Energy plants use dry waste fraction of municipal solid waste and produce renewable power with maximum reduction of waste volume, utilising least space in execution in compliance with SWM Rules 2016 and fulfilling all the statutory norms of environmental protection. Waste to Energy and bio-methanation projects will integrate the concept of circularity in waste management by producing green energy from dry and wet waste components of municipal solid waste. The by-products such as electricity and Bio-CNG will also help in achieving sustainability of waste management operations. The EIL will assist and handhold the million plus cities in developing such projects for larger quantum of waste integrating circularity in waste management. In the first phase, 25 million plus cities will be selected for developing large-scale process plants. The success of these projects will be pivotal as it will be conceptualised and executed as bench-marking for such projects. Thus, collaboration for providing support in preliminary technical assessment and transaction advisory services from EIL will have a significant impact. /IANS