The Chennai Resilience Centre (CRC), an unit of Care Earth Trust, recently launched the Urban Oceans Project to address waste management challenges at different levels in the city and identify opportunities to reduce the waste that reach waterbodies.
To strengthen the solid waste management and provide actionable solutions, the organisation has come up with two pilot project ideas. It is implementing a pilot project to make Kasturba Nagar in Adyar a zero-waste neighbourhood. Krishna Mohan, chief resilience officer, CRC said, “We have collaborated with the Residents of Kasturba Nagar Association (ROKA) to segregate waste and install lane composters on streets and divert organic waste from bins. The waste will be composted into manure and shared with residents.”
The organisation is also identifying smaller projects and hosting capacity-building programmes and door-to-door awareness campaigns for various stakeholders, including domestic workers and schools. “We want to encourage recycling and avoid waste from getting dumped into waterways. There are plans to divert 100 kg of cloth waste every week from reaching dumpyards or clogging stormwater drains by linking 100 tailors in ward 173 with an aggregator,” Mr. Mohan said.
The Urban Ocean Project is a partnership of The Circulate Initiative, Resilient Cities Network and Ocean Conservancy and executed along with Okapi Research and Advisory, an IIT Madras-incubated research organisation. Parama Roy, its executive director, said Padcare was another initiative being planned in schools in Adyar to recycle sanitary napkins. Awareness would be created on using ‘punch the plastic’ hooks, a campaign launched by IIT-M, to collect plastic waste.
To ensure a clean waterscape in the city, the organisation has suggested additional trash booms in waterbodies and waterways to trap waste. The recommendations were discussed during a meeting with representatives from corporate companies and government departments, including the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Forests.
“We are exploring the possibility of reusing waste collected from waterways like water hyacinth and turning them into woven items like baskets and provide livelihood opportunities. About 200 women self-help group members will be trained as entrepreneurs initially,” Ms.Roy added.
