Singapore’s Blue Planet coming up with world’s largest waste processing plant in North Chennai

Singapore-based Blue Planet Environmental Solutions Pte Ltd is coming up with the world’s largest waste processing plant at Kodungaiyur in North Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The company is working with farmers to help them conver agricultural wastes, including paddy stubble, into compressed biogas (CBG).

Prashant Singh, co-founder and CEO of Blue Planet

“We are clearing the landfill there (in Kodungaiyur). You will see in the next three years, we’ll make the (garbage) dumpyard disappear for you,” said Prashant Singh, co-founder and CEO of Blue Planet. 

Present in 15 States

The Greater Chennai Corporation has sanctioned a transformative project to bio-mine the Kodungaiyur dumpyard. This will mark a significant step towards reclaiming decades of accumulated waste and restoring ecological balance in North Chennai. The Kodungaiyur dumpyard contains 66 lakh cubic meters of accumulated garbage, posing environmental and public health concerns. This project promises a comprehensive bio-mining approach aimed at addressing the longstanding environmental burden borne by the region’s residents.

Blue Planet is present in 15 States of the country, with landfill biomining being one of the key areas. “If you look at the landfills, I think there is a lot of opportunity there. We are one of the largest players, where we have processed more than 1.5 crore tonnes of waste,” he said.

In Chennai, the Singapore-based firm, which works on a zero-residue model, completed landfill mining at the Pallikaranai dump site as part of efforts to preserve the Pallikaranai wetland.  

REF for cement plants

At Pallikaranai, the company partnered with the Tamil Nadu Forest Department and used the soil generated from the waste to replace topsoil at multiple locations. “Tamil Nadu IAS officer Supriya Sahu (when she was the department’s secretary) appreciated our efforts and the kind of impact we created,” said Singh. 

Blue Planet has created refuse-derived fuel (RDF), a combustible material, that is used in cement plants, replacing 20 lakh tonnes of coal and fossil fuels. “It’s a double benefit. We clear the landfill and use that material to substitute for fossil fuel in the market,” he said.  

Launched seven years ago, Blue Planet has emerged as one of the fastest-growing climate change and waste management companies in Asia. “We are the second-largest company in Singapore and the third-largest in New Zealand. We have built one of the world’s largest businesses based out of India with presence in more than 15 countries,” said Singh. 

Solutions for bio-gas sector

Blue Planet, which has deployed solutions particularly for the bio-gas sector, treats waste as a resource and deploys technology to get the right value from the resource — organic, food, industrial, commercial and other wastes.  

Blue Planet has acquired BioCube technology from the UK, and this provides the company with the flexibility of customising its solutions depending on the feedstock, from organic food to chicken litter or municipal food waste.  This will be commercially launched soon.  

The company’s Centre of Excellence in Pune gives it the flexibility to try and test different feedstocks, said Singh. The Singapore-based firm has an integrated solution for waste management in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Waste is collected from 80,000 households, and all 12 vehicles which collect the waste are run on CBG. 

The waste gets processed and fuels these vehicles that collect the waste, he said and added that the best is yet to come from the company.

Stubble burning

On the company’s role in agriculture, he said the company has deployed over 120-plus projects across the world. “Of these, 80-90 projects have been deployed in India in the public and private sectors. We have technology for the dry digestion of biomass. Ours is one of the first technologies that got validated as well. We demonstrated it in the Haryana Agricultural University, which focuses mainly on biomass, the agri-based perspective,” the company’s CEO said.

Blue Planet is now holding discussions with public sector units and private players to deploy the technology in alignment with farmers. “We see huge potential as far as the whole stubble burning is concerned, or getting them better fertilizers under the PM Pranam scheme or leveraging the Govardhan or SARTHAK scheme. I think there are enough and more opportunities for us to work together with farmers and make positive impacts in their lives,” said Singh.

Stating that most of the technology today is “wet digestion” of biomass into compressed biogas (CBG), he said the company has developed, deployed and tested a technology that does not need much water to convert the paddy stubble. It is in talks with PSUs in the country to deploy such solutions with the help of the government, and taking farmers along as part of the solution. 

In talks with 3 States

The CBG process results in fertilizer being produced as a byproduct. This fully organic fertilizer can be used for the crops. “Farmers don’t need to add (chemical) fertilizers and degrade the quality of the soil,” the CEO said.

 The company is holding discussions and will likely launch the CBG projects in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Uttarakhand. “It has carried out pilot projects, one at its Pune Centre of Excellence and the other at Haryana Agricultural University. “We’ve got some phenomenal results and are taking those results to expand on a commercial scale,” he said.

 Blue Planet, which acquired Mahindra’s Waste To Energy Solutions business, has a plant at Tata Motors in Pune, where the waste generated in the kitchen is converted into biogas to refuel the kitchen. This replaces 80 per cent of the kitchen’s fuel usage. 

Well-funded

“We have 78 such different installations in the private and government sectors, where we are making a positive impact,” he said. 

 On sustainable alternatives, Singh said the availability of quality feedstock remains a challenge. “We need to do a lot more work across India,” the company’s CEO said.  

 Blue Planet is well funded with investments by Nomura, Sysma Holdings, NEEV Fund and Danish sovereign wealth Fund ISU. The company is growing by 50-60 per cent annually, he claimed.

Published on June 6, 2025