MYSORE: A day after the young and old rolled up their sleeves to clean-up the city with their novel 'Let's do it Mysore' campaign, the Mysore City Corporation authorities are planning to rope in its participants to join the civic body in managing waste. They want the participants to start segregating waste at their homes and help the MCC.

MCC health officer Dr D G Nagaraj said he appreciates the enthusiasm shown by 31,890 persons in their unique campaign, which was a successful effort. "But now we request all these participants to join hands with us and start segregating waste at the source. This will help MCC in managing solid waste in a better way," he said.

The MCC wants them to begin at their homes by separating kitchen, dry and biomedical wastes and give it separately to the garbage collectors. "If these participants cooperate with the MCC, we will reserve a day in a week to collect only dry waste like paper, plastic and cover, and kitchen waste on daily basis. One can keep dry waste, which won't decay, for a few days and this reduces the burden on the MCC for segregating waste," he suggested.

To a query, Nagaraj said Mysore city has nearly two lakh households and only a few of them have showed interest in segregating waste at the source. But this won't help the civic body unless at least half of the ward residents joined hands with the MCC.

He also added that MCC was willing to join hands with NGOs or voluntary groups to keep the city clean. "We are already running zero waste management centres in association with women self-help groups," he pointed out.

KOCHI: Ever wondered why garbage collection from your household has been irregular in recent times in the city? Well, because you don't offer 'tips' to the corporation staff like restaurants and other eateries in the city.

According to sources, restaurant owners reportedly pay Rs 100 to Rs 1,000 extra (depending on the quantity of waste) to ensure regular collection of waste by the corporation, thanks to the local body's failure to fix a rate for the same. However, health standing committee chairman T K Asharaf said the corporation would introduce a new system for collecting waste from restaurants in the next fiscal.

"We will fix a charge for restaurants after we buy new vehicles for waste collection. But due to the delay in getting funds from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), we have not been able to buy vehicles. So the implementation of the project had to be postponed to the next fiscal," Asharaf said. "We pay the corporation staff to ensure that waste is collected regularly," said a restaurant owner. He also expressed his apprehension over the corporation's plan to introduce a new system as staff may continue to levy money from them. The Kerala Hotel and Restaurant Association (KHRA) said they had set up a biogas plant in the corporation land a few years ago for treating waste from restaurants. But the lack of support from corporation staff forced them to close it down.

There are over 1,200 restaurants and eateries in the corporation area.

Even though the corporation is not charging anything from restaurants, municipalities have been charging Rs three to treat a kg of waste.