In order to encourage people towards the scientific disposal of waste, the Kote Gram Panchayat (GP) has taken up a programme called ‘Nanna Mane, Nanna Grama’ (My Home, My Village).
Kote gram panchayat has a population of 5,914 and has 1,337 households. Mattu village, which comes under it, is known for the cultivation of the famed Mattu Gulla (brinjal) which has received the Geographical Indication (GI) tag.
With the help of a voluntary organisation Bharatiya Sahayaseva Samsthe, and a Bengaluru-based company Shankar Infrastructure, the panchayat took up a garbage management programme in 350 small houses (built on three to five cents of land) on February 8.
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Under the programme, each of these 350 houses was given two buckets – green for wet waste, red for dry waste – and a bag for collecting plastic and other materials.
The waste is collected in a three-wheeler goods carrier and taken to an organic manure manufacturing plant set up near the panchayat.
The cost of maintaining the three-wheeler and giving salaries of the supervisor, truck driver and cleaner is borne by the voluntary organisation and the private company.
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Presently, no fee is collected from the houses.
“After a year, we plan to collect a fee from each house. We will extend this programme to the entire panchayat in next three months,” said Panchayat Development Officer Chandrakala.
According to Prashant Jathanna, gram panchayat president, the panchayat came up with this programme to prevent people from throwing waste on the road and other places. “We gave the name ‘Nanna Mane, Nanna Grama’ so that people realised that if their houses are clean, the village too will be clean,” he said.
People have responded positively to this programme. Chandravati Salian, a homemaker, said it was a good initiative and had increased cleanliness in the area. Asha Bhuvanesh, another homemaker, said: “Earlier people used to throw garbage around my house. But now the surroundings are clean.”
Since the programme was launched in February, manure has been generated once from the organic manure manufacturing plant.
“We sold the manure at a nominal cost to farmers cultivating ‘Mattu Gulla’ here. Once the programme is extended throughout the village, we may think of selling the manure at a profit,” Ms. Chandrakala said.