The Hindu 20.08.2012
Udupi CMC plans to ban plastic bags in September
Kiran Kumar, president of Udupi City Municipal Council
(CMC), said on Friday that the municipality was planning to ban all
kinds of plastic bags from September 1. He was speaking at an
interaction programme organised by the Udupi Consumer Forum here. To a
question by retired manger of Syndicate Bank Ramesh Rao, Mr. Kumar said
he hoped that the ban would be implemented completely by September 15.
A ban on plastic carry bags would discourage people from disposing of garbage on road sides and in other public places, he said.
After
the municipality banned the use of plastic bags below 40 microns in
October 2011, the problem of garbage disposal had come down by nearly 20
per cent. To streamline the existing door-to-door garbage collection
system in the city, the municipality was thinking of providing two
buckets to each house — one for collecting wet waste and another for dry
waste. While the wet waste buckets would be collected daily, the dry
waste buckets would be collected once a week. Now, wet and dry garbage
was being collected daily by self-help groups (SHGs) for a fee of Rs. 30
per house every month. Once the two-bucket system was enforced, the
municipality would not collect any fee from houses, but would collect
fees only from commercial buildings.
The municipality
was planning two power projects — one was the bio-methanation plant to
generate power using wet or green waste, and another plant to generate
power using solid waste by pyrolysis method. These two projects would
help make Udupi a clean city, Mr. Kumar said.
To a
question, Mr. Kumar said that the municipality had faced some problem in
supplying drinking water in May this year because the district
administration had not allowed mechanised removal of silt from the river
following a court order.
A ban on plastic bags would curb garbage disposal on road sides