For a month now, 42-year-old S. Vijayalakshmi, a resident of a housing board apartment in Anna Nagar, has been segregating waste generated by her household properly and dumping them appropriately in two different bins provided by the Chennai Corporation. Hers is one of 875 households, between AA and AF blocks of the apartment complex, which has agreed to participate in the civic body’s novel experiment aimed at ultimately replacing street corner dustbins with household bins, into which segregated waste goes in.
“Initially, we found the practice of separating plastics, in other words the recyclable ones from kitchen wastes, cumbersome as we are habituated to dump all wastes into one bin. But slowly we are getting accustomed to this new practice,” says R. Sekar, secretary, AB Block Residents Welfare Association.
According to Corporation officials, the experiment done on a section of households in the apartment is a pilot project. The exercise is expected to be extended to other parts of the city. As per the plan, the civic body gave each of the selected 875 households in Anna Nagar two bins, free.
Each household has to collect biodegradable wastes including kitchen wastes in the green bin and recyclable wastes including plastics in the blue bin. Corporation workers collect biodegradable waste from the green bins every day and non-biodegradable waste from blue bins twice a week. Every day, on an average, around two tons of domestic waste is collected from these 875 households while non-biodegradable wastes amount to around 25 kg per day. In fact, in Anna Nagar, which comprises four Corporation wards between 99 and 102, the total amount of domestic wastes generated is more than 100 tons daily.
“These blocks were selected for the project because the resident associations were very cooperative and willing to involve themselves in the project. We have also roped in volunteers from Young Exnora for door-to-door campaign on garbage segregation in the neighbourhood,” said a Corporation official.
Subsequently, the sanitary staff of the Corporation would further segregate the wastes at a common point in the neighbourhood before the biodegradable and non-biodegradable wastes were sent to compost yard, where the biodegradable wastes like kitchen wastes were converted into manure while the non-biodegradable wastes, including plastics, were crushed to be used along with bitumen to lay roads in the city. At present, to save time and costs, Corporation officials have been using the space at the burial ground in Arumbakkam on Poonamallee High (PH) Road as compost yard. The existing compost yard facility for the neighbourhood is available only in Choolai, around 15km from Anna Nagar.
