In order to move up in the ranking of the yearly Swachh Survekshan, the municipal corporation has enforced a ban on use of plastic bags below 50 microns and encouraged decentralised composting to manage solid waste.
Thanks to a campaign launched by ‘Paryavarana Jagruthi’ teams to spread awareness on environment protection and against the use of plastic bags, a majority of people in the city had switched to cloth or jute bags, said Municipal Commissioner S.Venkatakrishna.
There had been a perceptible change in the behaviour of denizens and shopkeepers as the civic body implemented the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, Mr.Venkatakrishna said in a conversation with The Hindu .
Women teams
Imposition of fines as much as ₹1.70 lakh against those using plastic bags had had a deterrent effect and the corporation had seized eight tonnes of plastic bags of less than 50 microns. Even those who had been using bags of more than 50 microns had given up using the bags as the civic body imposed a monthly charge of ₹5,000 on shopkeepers who used them, he added.
“We will implement rules relating to debris and solid waste management to move up the ladder in the Swachh Survekshan ranking to break into the top 20 cities next year from the present 83rd position,” he said. The city stood fourth in the State in 2018.
For the decentralised management of waste, the civic body had roped in some women to encourage households to adopt aerobic composting of biodegradable waste and was providing inoculum and dust bins free. More than 1,000 households had taken to composting in their backyard as against a target of 3,000 households, said Mr.Venkatakrishna, adding that composting would be taken up on burial grounds and in parks.
Now, after meeting their own needs, households could sell vegetables and fruits from their kitchen gardens to the corporation at ₹ 3 per kg. As debris dumped on roadside and on the city outskirts posed a serious challenge, the civic body had earmarked four acres of land near the summer storage tank I near Vengamukapalem for construction debris. The civic body staff could lift a tractor load of debris from a construction site at ₹3000, he added. Meanwhile, under the smart city project, a Command Control Centre was being set up at the Municipal Corporation at the cost of ₹4 crore for surveillance in the city and the same would be connected to the Chief Minister's dashboard.
