The Hindu       24.10.2014 

Corporation moots new waste disposal plan

: After several unsuccessful attempts to rid the capital city of garbage menace, the City Corporation is all set to adopt the Alappuzha experiment in decentralized solid waste management.

T.M. Thomas Isaac, MLA, who had spearheaded the Alappuzha experiment, and Mayor K. Chandrika said at an interactive session with journalists here on Wednesday that the Corporation would soon mount a broad movement for garbage clearance and management with public participation.

“The past is past. Our attempt will be to launch an initiative in campaign mode to create awareness among homesteads about the need to process waste at the source,” Dr. Isaac said.

The Corporation, he said, would welcome any original initiative aimed at solid waste management at source, but would generally go in for composting that would help solve the garbage problem and also help produce manure and biogas.

The emphasis would be on mass participation and awareness creation so that garbage would not end up on roads and various drains that crisscrossed the city. The Erumakkuzhi garbage dump, adjacent to the Chala market, would be capped. Efforts would also be made to convert it into a WAT-SAN (water and sanitation) park.

Dr. Isaac conceded that there were both credibility issues and sustainability questions that needed to be addressed when launching this initiative. “Let us not rake up the past. Our effort should be to look forward and see what we can do,” he said and added that the campaign proposed to focus on school students, who were the best campaigners for all such initiatives.

Simultaneously, there would also be efforts to redefine the job profile of Corporation employees from mere cleaners to change agents at the local level, he said.

The Mayor said the Corporation would save more than Rs. 20 lakh a month in diesel charges if there could be an efficient decentralized solid waste management system in place in the city.

The Corporation, she said, was trying to check the use of plastic, but there were some practical difficulties in enforcing total non-use of plastic bags.

Focus on mass participation

Water and sanitation park planned