Discarding food waste into waste bins along with plastic carry bags, bottles and paper is upsetting the processing of waste at the solid waste treatment plant of the local body.
As the urban practice of segregating the refuse into biodegradable and non-degradable ones has come down, the local body is attempting to reintroduce the system to make waste processing effective.
Around 20 per cent of the refuse reaching the treatment plant was found mixed with non-degradable refuse, including glass and plastic, said A.A. Baiju, the contractor who is running the treatment plant. Besides the regular workers, 10 workers had to be engaged additionally to sieving through the refuse to remove the non-degradable refuse. The mixing up of food waste with non-degradable refuse has been causing damage to the machinery of the plant. Moreover, it is also affecting the processing, said Mr. Baiju.
The contractor had written to the Health Officer of the Kochi a few weeks ago that the processing had to be stopped due to the mixing up of the refuse.
Over the past few years, the trend of segregating refuse has come down. The local body had earlier successfully brought down the trend to below 5 per cent of the total refuse collected from the city households. But the vigil has slowly thinned and to 20 to 25 per cent waste reaching the plant belonged to the non-degradable category, said T.K. Ashraf, chairman of the Health Standing Committee of the Corporation.
It has been decided that the local body will not lift non-segregated waste from October 2. The civic administration had earlier distributed separate containers to all the households for segregated collection of waste. Around 50,000 containers will soon be distributed to the city households through the local councillors for storing refuse separately. Kochi Corporation would have to spend around Rs.1 crore from its plan fund for the procurement of the containers, Mr. Ashraf said.
