Hospitals operate around the clock, providing essential healthcare services while generating significant quantities of unavoidable food waste every day. Managing this organic waste efficiently is critical to maintaining hygiene, reducing environmental impact and ensuring uninterrupted hospital operations.
To support the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai’s vision for sustainable waste management, AeroShakti designed, built and commissioned a 2 MT per day decentralised biomethanation plant at Group of Tuberculosis (GTB) Hospital in Mumbai.
The facility processes segregated food waste generated within the hospital campus, converting it into renewable biogas and green electricity, demonstrating how healthcare institutions can embrace circular resource management while reducing their carbon footprint.
The Challenge
Large hospitals generate substantial quantities of organic waste every day from patient meals, staff canteens, kitchens and food preparation areas. If not managed correctly, this waste can create odour, hygiene concerns, increased transportation requirements and unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions.
GTB Hospital required a reliable, hygienic and environmentally responsible solution capable of processing unavoidable food waste on site while ensuring compliance with municipal waste management regulations.
The solution needed to:
- Process food waste close to where it is generated
- Minimise transportation and associated emissions
- Maintain high standards of hygiene
- Recover valuable resources from unavoidable organic waste
- Operate reliably within a busy healthcare environment without disrupting daily hospital activities
The Solution
AeroShakti installed a 2 tonne per day decentralised biomethanation plant within the GTB Hospital campus, allowing segregated organic waste generated by the hospital to be processed on site.
The waste collected from hospital kitchens, dining facilities and food preparation areas undergoes controlled anaerobic digestion, where naturally occurring microorganisms break down the organic material in an oxygen-free environment. Instead of becoming landfill waste, the food waste is converted into valuable renewable resources through a closed-loop process.
The facility produces:
- Renewable biogas, which can be used as a clean alternative fuel for thermal applications or further upgraded for energy use
- Renewable electricity, generated from the biogas and used for captive energy consumption within the facility
- Organic digestate, which can be processed into nutrient-rich biofertiliser suitable for landscaping and agricultural applications
By treating food waste at source, the plant significantly reduces waste transportation while creating a cleaner and more sustainable waste management system for the hospital.
Our Impact and the Next Steps
The GTB Hospital biomethanation facility demonstrates how healthcare institutions can move beyond conventional waste disposal and adopt circular economy principles. By converting unavoidable food waste into renewable energy, the hospital is able to:
- Reduce dependence on landfill disposal
- Lower greenhouse gas emissions associated with organic waste decomposition
- Recover renewable energy from unavoidable food waste
- Improve hygiene through rapid processing of biodegradable waste
- Reduce vehicle movements required for transporting wet waste
- Support Mumbai’s wider sustainability and climate action objectives
Beyond environmental benefits, decentralised processing also improves operational resilience by treating waste within the hospital campus, reducing dependence on external disposal infrastructure while creating renewable energy that can contribute towards the facility’s own energy requirements.
As hospitals continue to pursue greener operations and lower carbon emissions, projects such as GTB Hospital demonstrate how waste can become an integral part of sustainable healthcare infrastructure rather than simply a disposal challenge.
Supporting Sustainable Healthcare
Healthcare facilities are among the largest generators of food waste within urban environments. By investing in decentralised biomethanation, hospitals can improve environmental performance while recovering renewable resources from unavoidable organic waste.
The GTB Hospital project serves as a scalable model for hospitals, medical colleges and healthcare campuses seeking to reduce waste, generate renewable energy and contribute towards India’s Net Zero ambitions through practical circular economy solutions.
Recharge your Healthcare Facility with AeroShakti
From hospitals and medical colleges to healthcare campuses and institutional kitchens, AeroShakti designs and operates decentralised biomethanation systems that transform unavoidable food waste into renewable biogas, green electricity and valuable biofertiliser. Together, we can build cleaner hospitals, reduce landfill dependence and turn everyday organic waste into a sustainable source of renewable energy.