More than a month after its installation, the plastic shredder machines installed at Palayam market by the city Corporation have failed to make any difference in the disposal of plastic waste in the ward.
According to Corporation officials, the two shredder machines installed at the market have failed to give the desired results in processing plastic waste.
Mayor K. Chandrika said that when compared to the maintenance expense of the machines, their utility was negligible.
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“These are two very small machines. Although we were told that they have the capacity to process up to 50 kg of plastic a day, on actual operational level we found that their capacity is much less,” she said.
Ms. Chandrika said that although the machines were originally installed to process plastic waste collected from the Palayam ward, they were now being used to process plastic waste collected from the Palayam market area alone.
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Storage issues
“The storing of shredded plastic is another problem. Even if we start to collect and process plastic waste from the entire ward, we do not have space to store the shredded plastic,” she said.
The Mayor, however, said that the issue of plastic waste disposal faced by the city would be addressed in a couple of months.
She said that Corporation had in-principal sanctioned a project to supply plastic waste collected from the city to the Sai Gramom at Thonnakkal, run by the Sathya Sai Orphanage Trust, where a plastic processing plant was under construction.
10 tonnes a day
“They have come forward with the proposal to process plastic waste. Their demand is around 10 tonnes of plastic a day. The generation of plastic waste in the city is estimated to be around six tonnes a day. This means that we will be able to collect plastic from the whole city and hand it over to the Trust for disposal,” Ms. Chandrika said.
The Mayor said that once the project was initiated, Kudumbasree Clean Well units could also be redeployed to collect and sort the plastic waste.
“We have already held discussions with representatives of the Sathya Sai Orphanage Trust. As soon as the construction of their plant is completed, we will be able to start household-level collection of plastic waste,” Ms. Chandrika said.