The Hindu 04.11.2010
Residents take initiative on dry garbage disposal
Staff Reporter
| VMC is planning to create a dustbin-free city by 2012 |
Residents of Green House, an apartment, have come out with a humble initiative
They have decided to separate the dry and wet garbage and launched their own effort
VISAKHAPATNAM: The city generates about 900 tons of garbage and the municipal corporation is facing a huge task disposing it off.
It has a huge dumping yard at Kapuluppada to which the collected garbage is taken from the transfer station in the One Town area.
The corporation is gearing itself to implement the mandatory reforms in solid waste management by creating a dustbin-free city by 2012 and also launching other initiatives for an environmental friendly disposal of waste.
Keeping the magnitude of the task in view, the residents of Green House, an apartment in Balayya Sastry Layout, have come out with a humble initiative.
Praiseworthy
To reduce the load on the corporation's garbage collection, they have decided to separate the dry and wet garbage and launched their own effort.
“Two bins have been set up for the dry garbage excluding newspapers. One of them is for plastic bottles and the other for sachets and other plastic materials, covers and cardboard boxes and cartons, toys etc,” says architect Y. Narasimha Rao, who is one of the residents.
All the nine residents of the apartment are enthusiastically participating in the exercise for the last three months.
The collected dry garbage is sold to the traders who in turn sell it for recycling.
The corporation estimates that about 130 grams of dry garbage is generated by each family in the city. Thus more than 200 tons of dry garbage is to be disposed of.
Eco-friendly
Mr. Narasimha Rao estimates that about 10 lakh people generate 90 tons of dry garbage to transport which trucks have to run 1,000 km a day.
That works out to whopping 3.65 lakh km. a year.
He is of the view that any effort to reduce the load would go a long way in conservation.
Official estimates put expenditure on solid waste management at Rs.60 crore while salaries of permanent staff, maintenance, repairs etc cost another Rs.40 crore.
Significant move
The effort of Green House has its significance as the municipal corporation that had entered into a MoU with multi-business conglomerate ITC for collection of garbage in August last shelved the plan after a furore in the general body meeting.
