The Defence Colony neighbourhood looks different from the others in the city and it is not the posh houses that are the differentiating factor. It is the way the garbage is managed.
“Residents here put their kitchen waste into separate garbage bags. Our workers collect these bags and bring them into our waste management site to be turned into a fertiliser, thereby recycling the waste,” says Veena Kalan, a residential welfare manager.
A tour of the zero waste management site reveals pits of kitchen waste that is slowly being turned into compost. “A chemical compound has to be added to the waste everyday and in four months you have compost, or a fertiliser which is then packaged and sold,” says local MCD worker Ashok.
He adds that 95 per cent of the houses in the colony were co-operative and the residential welfare association active enough to ensure that issues like water-logging and garbage accumulation were minimal.
“The fertiliser is sold for Rs.50. More often than not, we run out. We supply to several DDA parks and residents,” he adds.
Of course, there are several hitches.
“There are times when garbage comes without being separated and this is when we have to spend time sorting it out. However, most of the time we have to give up when this happens and we just end up dumping it in the garbage dump,” he says, adding that it is mostly the women who are active in ensuring that the neighbourhood remains clean and the waste is responsibly managed.
“This is a plan that most of us have been trying to present to the civic agencies. However, they do not seem to be bothered. Managing waste instead of dumping it in pits and adding to the pollution of the city seems to be the clever way of going about it. The Swachh Bharat programme can at least prescribe something like this to be adopted by the local civic agencies,” said Chetan Sharma, chairman of the Federation of GK II Complex RWA.