LAHORE, April 21: Corps Commander Lt-Gen Zarrar Azim will inaugurate the first-ever compost and biogas generation plant in the country on Ferozepur Road here on Wednesday.

The plant has been completed at a cost of Rs30 million by Waste Busters, a non-government organization engaged in recycling municipal solid waste in the city for the past several years. It has a capacity to produce organic fertilizer and biogas (methane) by recycling the waste through a process completed in six to eight weeks.

Waste Busters chief executive Asif Farooqi told Dawn that the full scale commercial plant had been established after the success of a small scale pilot project. He said the plant would consume 500 tons of solid waste daily to produce 150 tons of organic fertilizer (30 per cent) and 1,000 cubic metres of biogas.

He said a 50kg bag of fertilizer produced under the project was being sold for Rs100 in the market already. The biogas would also be filled in cylinders and sold in the market. He said the plant would create hundreds of jobs besides producing biogas and fertilizer.