AMRITSAR: The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandhak Committee (SGPC) has decided to install a biogas plant at the community kitchen of the Golden Temple here in an effort to reduce its carbon footprint. The SGPC, a body managing the day-to-day affairs of the Golden Temple, said the move was aimed at making the religious shrine environment-friendly.
The biogas plant will be set up to run the Golden Temple’s community kitchen, which serves food to around one lakh visiting devotees every day, SGPC secretary Daljit Singh Bedi said. “Around one lakh meals are served every day… The SGPC also wants to start harvesting rainwater,” he said.
Bedi said devotees often donated huge quantities of vegetables to the temple and at times, some of those went to waste, adding that in such circumstances, the excess vegetables could be used as fuel in the biogas plant. Speaking about the project, Amritsar Municipal Corporation Commissioner Sonali Giri said the biogas plant would be set up in collaboration with the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) head.
She said a comprehensive project report was compiled by a team of experts from the SGPC, the Amritsar Municipal Corporation and the government of Punjab. The report was submitted to the HPCL and also sent to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre for further analysis, Giri added.
She said a spot was inspected by a technical team of the HPCL for this purpose. Presently, all meals being cooked on LPG-run hotplate cylinders consume around 100 units on a daily basis. In certain rarer cases, the SGPC uses firewood too, Bedi said.
Amritsar Municipal Corporation mayor Karamjit Singh Rintu said, “We are making provisions for underground smart bins and bio compactors. The waste deposited in these bins will be used in the biogas plant as fuel.” PTI
