The Coimbatore Corporation is making yet another attempt at source segregation of waste (collection of waste at houses and commercial complexes from where waste is generated).
This time, it comes after the Corporation officials studied through presentations how the Warangal model of waste collection worked.
Representatives of the Andhra Pradesh civic body and non-government organisations attached thereto were in the city twice in the past month to first tell the officials and then the conservancy workers how they went about segregating waste in residential areas, how they sought the public’s cooperation and how they processed the waste.
ADVERTISEMENT
Consequent upon the meetings, the Corporation placed before the Council on Wednesday last a proposal to adopt the model that was adopted in the Warangal Municipal Corporation.
The proposal said that the Corporation had been implementing an integrated solid waste management programme under the public-private partnership mode along with the BEIL-UPL consortium.
With the merger of three municipalities, seven town panchayats and a village panchayat, the Corporation had seen an increase of 250 tonnes waste a day to take the total waste to be processed to 850 tonnes a day.
ADVERTISEMENT
The challenge before the civic body was to process the waste without damaging the environment. Along with the waste that was not segregated, waste from poultry, meat shops and fish shops got mixed, compounding the problem of segregating and processing the waste.
One of the ways to combat the problem was to go in for segregation of waste at source at the primary collection level. The Corporation, like the Warangal Municipal Corporation, would launch an awareness campaign to educate the city’s residents on the need for segregating the waste in all the 100 wards so as to make the city a garbage-free city.
The Corporation planned to fund the awareness campaign from its general fund or go in public-private partnership mode. It planned to engage a non-government or voluntary organisation for the purpose by calling for expression of interest.
Sources in the civic body said that they would talk to the selected voluntary or non-government organisation and also study the Warangal model to implement the scheme.
The Corporation had invested around Rs. 100 crore in the solid waste management programme.