The Hindu             31.10.2013

Making productive use of garbage

The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Park set up by Vettavalam town panchayat has, over the years, virtually turned into a manufacturing unit of myriad products.

The facility mainly produces natural manure and vermicompost. Besides composting, it segregates egg-shells from the garbage, pounds them, using traditional mortar, into powder that is then bottled and sold. The powder, used as manure, catalyses the growth of rose plants.

The facility also sells bottled leach, a liquid that seeps from manure production pits. Authorities say that people buy them for its weed suppressant quality. Plastic crumbs produced by crushing plastic disposables are sold to government agencies to enhance the durability of plastic roads.

Herbals and bamboo cultivated in the premises of the SWM Park with the help of manure produced there are another kind of production.

District Collector A. Gnanasekaran, who visited the facility along with reporters on Tuesday, said: “Apart from these manufactured goods, the park segregates 23 items from non-bio-degradable wastes found in garbage and sell them. Though the sales proceeds could not make up for the expenses of collecting, segregating and manufacturing things from the wastes, as of now, we hope that we could attain break-even at one point of time. Notwithstanding the gap between expenses and income, the centre already has accomplished its main objective of ensuring effective waste disposal and hygienic environment”.

The facility has a clean look and feel and lives up to the ‘Park’ tag. Asked how no stench emanates despite the facility handling garbage, S.M. Malayamanthirumudikari, Assistant Director of Town Panchayats, Vellore, told The Hindu : “Every kind of garbage takes a certain time to rot. For example, food takes eight hours and vegetables take 12 hours. But we collect, segregate and pile them up in appropriate pits and apply Effective Microorganism solution within the time the garbage takes to rot and stink”.

“The facility started in 2008 [is] performing well but Rs. 41.6 lakh funds received as part of Integrated Urban Development Mission for the year 2012-13 helped us to improve the facility in many ways. Three sheds were constructed, machines for cleaning and shredding plastic disposables; toilets built for the sweepers and Self Help Group members who work in the SWM programme and purchased 14 tricycles, constructed tiled pavements and set up eight solar lights.

All this infrastructure helps give the facility its pleasant and aesthetic look,” he said. Town Panchayat President A. Janardhanan and Executive Officer S. Ganesan expressed the hope that they could do more to sustain the glory of the ‘Park’.

The Hindu            30.10.2013

Solid waste management scheme should be probed: Coimbatore Mayor

Mayor S.M. Velusamy has asked the Coimbatore Corporation Commissioner G. Latha to investigate the way the civic body has implemented the Rs. 98-crore solid waste management (SWM) scheme. After ordering the investigation at the last Ordinary Council Meeting on Friday, he told The Hindu on Monday that the way the civic body — meaning officials — had implemented the scheme was not right. For, the civic body continued to face problems.

It was not the first time that he had asked for the investigation.

“I’ve been asking the officials to carry out a probe ever since I assumed office sometime in October 2011. I had asked the then Commissioner T.K. Ponnusamy, the Deputy Commissioner S. Sivarasu, who for sometime held charge as Commissioner and also the present Commissioner Ms. Latha.”

Stating that the officials had not taken seriously his suggestions for a probe, Mr. Velusamy said that he was forced to reiterate the demand in the council.

Sources familiar with the implementation of the solid waste management programme said that right from the word go, the Union Government-funded scheme did not proceed in the right direction.

The corporation had not distributed bins to all the city’s residents in that it was supposed to have to given white and green bins to each of the city’s residents so as to help them segregate waste into wet and dry wastes.

The corporation had not purchased the right number of pushcarts, was short of roadside bins, was yet to phase out bullock carts in waste management and had not successfully implemented the ban on plastics that were less than 40 microns.

The sources said that the corporation had concentrated the second and third stage of the project in that had bought a few bins, constructed a few transit stations, bought vehicles for the transport of the waste from the transit stations to the dump yard in Vellalore and roped in a contractor to process the waste there.

What the corporation did not do was educate the city’s residents on waste segregation — the first of the three stages of the waste management.

The result of the poor awareness creation exercise was that the Corporation transported mixed waste to the dump yard, where processing became next to impossible.

The sources said that the corporation was yet to spend the Rs. 45 lakh the Union Government gave to create awareness under the waste management project.