You may be greeted with a frown if you carry plastic carry bags when visiting Chembilode panchayat. This is a place which has been trying hard to tackle the plastic menace for years now and has learnt the hard way that it is impossible to wish it away just like that. Chembilode is also a panchayat that has gone ahead and tried on its own ways to keep the menace under check and is, now, one of the few panchayats that has been able to get over the top of the problem.
For Chembilode, it has been a fairly long journey from the largely ineffectual plastic ban to plastic recycling to manufacture of value- added products. When it went in for the conventional route of plastic ban, it found plastic bags popping up all over the place in spite of all that it did to create awareness of its hazardous consequences. That is when the panchayat decided to set up a plant to reprocess the waste into granules. Soon, a 13-member Self-Help Group (SHG) was entrusted with the task of turning the granules into plastic rope with financial assistance from the Edakkad Block Panchayat. “The recycling and reprocessing units in our panchayat were the first such initiatives by any local body in the State,” says panchayat vice-president M.V. Anil Kumar.
“Although the plant has the capacity to recycle 300 kg of plastic a day, the plastic waste generated in the panchayat comes to only 10 per cent of that. We are trying to link up with the other eight panchayats in the Edakkad block to ensure that there is adequate supply of plastic waste to make the plant viable,” says C.K. Babu, secretary of the SHG.
The panchayat is now planning to buy a vehicle to collect plastic waste from its 6,380 households and shops at the Chakkarakkal market area in the panchayat. “Without public support, this initiative would have failed,” says K. Damodaran, a bank employee and resident of Koyyod in the panchayat. M. Musthafa, leader of the Indian Union Muslim League and member of the panchayat, notes that all such good initiatives prove successful only due to consensus among all members of the panchayat and adds, “Our plastic recycling plant is a model for the entire State.”
