Kottayam ∙ Goodnight Mohan, a filmmaker and businessman, said that 20 years ago, he presented the latest plasma technology for waste management to the municipal authorities in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. No one understood that. No one was interested in it. – Goodnight Mohan told Manorama Online. During discussions related to the fire at the Brahmapuram plant, actor Srinivasan revealed the misadventure that his friend and film producer Goodnight Mohan proposed an innovative waste management project years ago in relation to waste management. He was responding to this.
Srinivasan said that Goodnight Mohan suggested that he could import machinery from abroad and install it at his own expense and treat the waste and only give the by-product. But Srinivasan also criticized that the government and the corporation did not give the green light to it because corruption could not be shown in it. Goodnight Mohan responded to Manorama Online about the project presented to the Kochi Corporation 20 years ago.
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“We thought about such a project 20 years ago. It was decided to implement the project in collaboration with an American company. It uses plasma technology related to waste treatment. It was a new technology here then. Any waste including plastic and iron could be treated without segregation. Normally when a solid is heated it turns into a liquid and when reheated it turns into a gas. The technology introduced by Anna involved the direct conversion of a solid into a gas. That gas will help generate energy.
Two by-products arise from this. One is energy and the other is slab. We only asked that the non-gaseous part produced by heating the solid waste should be mixed with iron, stone etc. to make slabs. It was also said that energy can be given to them. The plan was to make interlock slabs used in buildings and roads etc. A similar project was implemented in Japan at that time. It was presented here after going there and discovering it. Goodnight Mohan said that if 10 acres of land is taken over by the Corporation, they can set up a treatment plant with modern technology and if they deliver 250 tons of waste a day, they are ready to pay for it in the future.
“But when it was presented, no one understood it. He said that no one showed interest in implementation. The government was requested to allocate land for dumping garbage. Similarly, it was also requested to collect the garbage from the locals. If we go directly to collect these, the locals will not give them. Sometimes there is another problem. That is why for some years the government requested to directly collect the waste. But the authorities rejected it saying that it was a project that would cost extra money. But I was asked whether I will spend any amount of crores. But he didn’t show interest in it” – he said.
Goodnight Mohan also recalled that he was a party to this project in the PIL filed by Advocate Jose Kannanthanam in the High Court regarding waste management. He joined my project because he was also in favor of it. The then Chief Justice of the High Court, Jawaharlal Gupta, who heard the case at that time, had read the whole plan and was fascinated by it. On that day, the authorities were summoned by the court and asked why the project was not being implemented and criticized. But as there was no follow-up, the project was abandoned later, he said. He said that if that plan had been implemented then, perhaps such a situation would not have arisen in Brahmapuram.
English Summary: Good Knight Mohan on Waste Disposal Plant suggested to Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi Corporation