Perungudi, Sholinganallur turn bin-free zones

According to a senior Chennai Corporation official, seven of twelve wards in Perungudi zone have been converted into bin-free divisions, while garbage bins from two of nine wards in Sholinganallur have been removed.

Divisions 168, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190 and 191 in Perungudi, and divisions 199 and 200 in Sholinganallur have been declared bin-free divisions now after running a pilot for the last four months. The civic body has plans to expand the initiative to other divisions as well.

As on January 1, 885 garbage bins were kept on the streets of Perungudi and 930 were placed in Sholinganallur zones. There were 31 bins in Manali as on January 1 and all of them were removed a few weeks ago before the zone was officially bin-free.

“The bins are being removed from the streets to ensure effective composting of bio-degradable waste and to recycle dry waste. This is a part of the zero-waste initiative that intends to cut the amount of garbage going to landfills. The garbage generated in commercial areas are being collected using garbage trucks,” the official from the Corporation said.

Of the total 5,000 tonnes of garbage generated in the city every day, around 50 per cent are bio-degradable wet waste, which could be composted and converted into organic manure. But, only around 600 tonnes of garbage have been effectively recycled by the civic body.

“If all the organic waste is segregated at the household level, no waste would go to landfills. Even dry waste such as rubber, leather, plastic, glasses and others can be recycled. Removing bins from the streets will encourage residents to segregate their waste and hand it over to conservancy workers,” the official said.

While welcoming the initiative, residents in Perungudi and Sholinganallur alleged that the local supervisors fail to monitor the conservancy workers in the bin-free divisions. “The civic body had failed to execute the project effectively. Due to this, residents dump their garbage on the streets and in vacant plots,” Michael, president of Kamarajar Nagar Residents Association in division 186, said.

He added that conservancy workers were not regular in collecting waste and that their schedule is haphazard. “We do not know when they would arrive,” said Michael.

He pointed out that even though the civic body workers remove garbage dumped on streets, they leave garbage dumped on vacant plots untouched.

When a Corporation official was questioned about this, he said that action would be taken against workers who fail to implement the initiative effectively.

Apart from turning Perungudi and Sholinganallur into bin-free zones, the civic body is also removing bins from other parts of the city. According to available data, 790 garbage bins were removed from the city streets till July 31.

Meanwhile, the Chennai Corporation, under Swachh Bharat Mission, has taken measures to procure 1,590 battery-operated tricycles for Rs 35 crore for door-to-door collection of waste.

“We already have 400 battery vehicles. Once the new vehicles are procured, all of them will be used in four zones, in which we are going to continue conservancy works. For the zones which are privatised, service providers will deploy battery vehicles. These will cut down the time and effort taken to collect waste,” the official explained.

Except Tondiarpet, Royapuram, Thiru Vi Ka Nagar and Anna Nagar zones, conservancy works in other areas will be privatised. The civic body has also sanctioned funds to set up non-recyclable waste incineration plants in four locations, 12 material recovery centres and 21 small bio-gas plants to implement zero-waste initiative.