The Hindu 14.02.2010

Source segregation of garbage soon in 96 wards

Deepa H Ramakrishnan

CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporation will soon start source segregation of garbage in portions of 96 wards in the city. Senior civic body officials said the initiative would initially cover 1,000 houses in each ward and then gradually expand it to other areas.

“By March first week, we will begin in all 84 wards. From Monday onwards, an intensive awareness campaign will be conducted in the selected areas and residents would be given bags to collect plastics and recyclables,” said an official. Chosen conservancy staff would be provided with red tricycles to periodically go to houses to collect the dry waste. They are being given the option of selling the materials and retaining the money for themselves. Work has already begun in Nungambakkam zone, which has started segregation in ward 100 Choolai area. A zonal official said the response from the public was good and localities such as Rutland Gate and Khader Nawaz Khan Road in Nungambakkam would be covered soon.

Private conservancy agency Neel Metal Fanalca which clears garbage in four Corporation Zones, has also begun source segregation in 5 wards. “We have deployed a separate vehicle for this and collect 27 tonnes of recyclables in five wards in a month. We are also doing partially in three wards,” said an official. The company plans to take up source segregation in all wards in Ice House Zone.

Deccan Chronicle 12.02.2010

Hospital waste renders Kodungaiyur hazardous

Feb. 11: Hazardous waste from city hospitals including human body parts, used syringes and bloodied gauze are driven into the 750-acre dump yard at Kodangiyur every day in violation of rules.

Hospitals are required to safely dispose of hazardous wastes at a treatment plant outside the city. Biowaste from over 250 hospitals in Chennai is incinerated at the private facility near Singaperumal Koil, about 40 km from the city, but a senior official at the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board says that this was only a part of what is actually generated by the hospitals.

“There is no doubt that bio medical waste is dumped elsewhere,” he says. “Almost 40 per cent of the waste such as surgical masks and gloves, IV fluid bottles, and syringes are quietly diverted to the market by either the hospital or sanitation workers.”

Corporation workers too say that two trucks loaded with stinking bio-waste are brought every day from hospitals around North Chennai at the Kodangiyur landfill.

“The waste smells so bad that we do not weigh it like we do with every other corporation truck that comes to this dump,” said the worker who mans the weighbridge.

“The hospital waste goes directly into the landfill, and is buried in a pit under many layers of other garbage.” However, Ganga, a ragpicker who sells plastic and rubber collected from the trash, says she
has seen chunks of flesh and even dead babies lying among the mass of syringes, medicine bottles, and blood-soaked cotton. “They are scavenged by dogs and crows,” she adds.