As India’s garbage pile climbs, waste-to-energy may offer the solution

An hour drive away from Delhi, past the capital’s towering landfills, a small incinerator is working to help reverse India’s chronic waste crisis.

The JBM Enviro waste-to-energy facility runs like a coal-fired power plant — it uses heat from burning feedstock to turn water into steam that powers a turbine. The electricity generated through the process, however, doesn’t employ fossil fuels and helps remove dirt from the environment, which proponents say makes it greener.

For decades the technology has been a popular solution for cleaning up streets and generating energy across rich countries such as Japan, Sweden and the US, but it’s struggled to take off in India.