Ullal City Municipality has stopped collecting waste from the doorsteps of people if segregated waste is not handed over to it, according to its commissioner Rayappa.
“We are doing so since past fortnight,” he told The Hindu adding that hence many people have now begun segregating waste. The dry and wet waste is being collected daily from its 27 wards, he said.
The civic body had entered into an agreement with a Bengaluru-based NGO to process the dry waste collected daily from the houses. Other waste material collectors have also been told to hand over dry waste to the NGO, he said. Dry waste collected in the jurisdiction of the municipality was between 2 and 2.5 tonnes daily. The civic body collected about five tonnes of wet waste daily, which is being transported to Mangaluru City Corporation’s compost plant at Pachchanady.
A private chicken waste processing unit at Baikampady collected about three tonnes of chicken waste daily from the municipality area. It made animal feed and oil used in soap manufacturing industry from it, the commissioner said.
Mr. Rayappa said the municipality will set up a dry waste collection centre that is expected to be operational after a month.
Four dry waste centres
Meanwhile, the Mangaluru City Corporation has proposed setting up four dry waste collection centres under Swachh Bharat Mission in the city. Of them two are being constructed at Kavoor and Madhavanagar in Surathkal. Their structures are being built on the premises of sewage treatment plants, said Madhu S. Manohar, environment engineer at the corporation.
The land for two more centres is yet to be finalised. Tentatively, land had been identified at Jeppinamogaru and Mannagudda. Those centres will be managed by NGOs. It has been planned to divert the dry waste collected by the contractor of the corporation every Friday to those centres for further segregation and to send material to recyclers. Though 56 specific categories of waste have been identified, broadly they can be classified into 23 categories, he said.