Having launched an ambitious plan on source segregation of solid waste across the city from June 5, Tiruchi Corporation is planning to strengthen its system of door-to-door collection of non-degradable solid wastes in the coming days.

The Corporation has also started reaching out to school and college students to drive home the importance of source segregation of waste to residents.

Under the system, city residents are required to segregate their bio-degradable and non-degradable waste and hand over the same to the sanitary workers. All 2.3 lakh households in the city, besides shops and commercial establishments, are required to comply with the new regulation. About 1,200 sanitary workers, monitored by senior officers, are engaged in collecting the non-degradable wastes exclusively on Wednesdays.

The city generated about 450 tonnes of solid waste every day and civic body aims at substantially reduce the quantum of non-degradable waste dumped at the Ariyamangalam garbage yard through the initiative. Residents are told to segregate the waste and collect them in separate blue and green coloured bins.

Civic officials say that there has been a gradual increase in the quantum of non-degradable waste collected on Wednesdays since the launch of the programme earlier this month. On the first day of the initiative, about 12.79 tonnes of non degradable wastes were collected. The quantum went up to 46.16 tonnes on June 15 and touched nearly 60 tonnes on Wednesday, Special Officer-cum-Corporation Commissioner N.Ravichandran told The Hindu .

The Corporation has identified about 200 vendors who would buy the non-degradable waste collected from residents for processing or recycling. The money generated from this is shared among the sanitary workers as an incentive. On Wednesday, about Rs. 1.70 lakh was distributed among the workers and the previous week the sum was around Rs. 1.25 lakhs.

“There is a gradual improvement as the message is reaching more number of residents in the city. Wherever we go to sensitise people, there is a good response from residents,” Mr. Ravichandran said.

However, the entire city could not be fully covered yet. With most sanitary workers collecting the solid wastes in push carts, the process takes considerable time. The Corporation has deployed about 27 mini autorickshaws too and these vehicles are able to cover about 2000 households a day.

“We plan to strengthen the collection system by acquiring another 40 such vehicles. Two of the new vehicles have already come and rest will hit the roads soon. This will help cover more households,” he felt.

“We hope to achieve cent per cent door-to-door collection soon and if we achieve this it will substantially bring down dumping of solid wastes in public places,” Mr. Ravichandran said.

The civic body was also conducting mass cleaning drives to clean solid wastes in public places, including vacant plots, in different localities. “Once we clean a particular locality, we tell the public to stop dumping wastes in public places.”

Simultaneously, the Corporation has launched an awareness campaign in schools and colleges to spread the message to residents through students. “We are planning to cover all schools and colleges in about a month’s time,” he added.

A total of 19.40 tonnes of non-biodegradable waste were collected from all the 100 wards of the city on Wednesday.

Corporation Commissioner S. Aneesh Sekhar, who oversaw the campaign of collecting plastic waste on all Wednesdays, said three corporation workers and one official would be in charge of collection in Zone 1 (Ellis Nagar), Zone 2 (Race Course Road), Zone 3 (Chairman Muthuramaier Road) and Zone 4 (Periyar bus stand). A huge workforce was mobilised for the campaign, he said.

S. Tamilarasi, a resident of Alwarpuram, said “It has become a habit for me to dump empty milk packet along with the vegetable waste. I have to change my habit in accordance with the corporation’s plan of waste segregation at source as it is good for the environment.”

Additional dumpsters have been placed along the Vaigai to prevent people from dumping non-biodegradable waste on the riverbed.

Corporation workers and residents took part in a signature campaign in the four zones to raise awareness of the importance of waste segregation at source. Assistant City Health Officer Parthiban, Assistant Commissioners and Sanitary Inspectors took part in the Wednesday’s campaign.