The Hindu 01.04.2013
Municipality steps up efforts to make Alappuzha litter-free
The Alappuzha Municipality has stepped up its efforts to reach its goal of making the town waste-free by February 2014.
Posters asking the public to determine whether their area will be fit for declaring as ‘clean ward’ has been placed across the municipality as part of the conclusion of the first phase of the project, ‘Nirmala Bhavanam, Nirmala Nagaram'.
The public can make sure that their ward is waste-free by fulfilling these conditions. They are: a) the ward should have 100 biogas plants, 300 pipe compost and four aerobic compost bins b) It should processes bio-degradable waste at its source itself and hand over non-degradable waste including plastic by separating them; c) the streets in the ward should be free of waste. If these conditions are met, the ward will be declared as waste-free by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy here on April 23, Alappuzha MLA T.M.Thomas Isaac said.
The campaign
Twelve wards have been listed in this regard, the MLA said. Cultural programmes highlighting the issue will be held in these 12 wards from April 10 to 21. These programmes will be of one hour duration and will be staged from in the evening at three centres in each ward on a single day. The general cleaning campaign will be conducted in April and declaration of the clean wards will be held at 4 p.m. on April 23.
Alappuzha municipality will not grant license to hotels, home stays and restaurants which do not set up bio-gas plant or other waste processing methods. If there is no space available for setting up biogas plant they could be set up on the compound of the hotel owner. “The municipality will seal such hotels if the conditions are not met”, said Alappuzha municipality chairperson, Mercy Diana Macido. She said that hotels have been given enough time to set up the plants.
The MLA said that the Alappuzha model of decentralised waste processing has been replicated in other towns and cities, where they bid goodbye to centralised waste processing plants.
The district court ward has shown great commitment in going ahead with the waste processing programmes, he added.
