THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Around 2.5 tonnes of waste is generated from 15 trains stationed at the Thiruvananthapuram Central railway station on a daily basis. But the station contains the capacity to process only about one ton per day of the produced wastes which include both biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste. Recently the Central station was awarded with ISO certification for being replete with necessary facilities including a clean environment. Plans to increase the processing capacity and establish a solar panel at the station is in progress.
Sanitation works including track, train and platform cleaning has been outsourced to different contractors. A waste collection centre situated at the rear end of the station is used to process garbage collected from the trains. While waste including those from the platform, which is handled by a different contractor, is processed separately. "Around 2 to 2.5 ton of waste is collected daily from the stationed trains, apart from around 300 kg waste gathered from platforms and track," said Muralidharan, senior section engineer (C and W).
The waste collected from the trains is brought to the collection centre for processing where 13 staff (11 women and 2 men) are assigned the segregation and processing task. "The women are in-charge for segregation whereas men are assigned the task of processing. Biodegradable waste which weighs around 250 kg are dumped in four aerobic bins set up here and plastic waste is shredded with a shredding machine. The processed plastic waste is then used for tarring and making PVC pipes," said Prasad Kumar, a cleaning staff.
The women are provided with gloves and masks which is mandatory to use while waste segregation. "We spend hours segregating as we need to separate food and plastic wastes before sending it for processing. What's even harder is when we have to separate used pads and condoms from these pile of garbages," said Saboora Beevi, a cleaning staff.
Chief health inspector Jai Krishnan said wastes including plastic bottles, newspaper, aluminium foil and food plate are mechanically pressurised and packed in bundles by using a bailing machine which is then carried to scrap shops.
ISO certification
The station was given the certification for facilities including LED lights, energy-saving fans and AC, emergency hospital service, baby feeding centre, women passenger facilitation centre especially for cancer
patients, escalators and lifts. "The railway has already identified an extra space here and is waiting to get a sponsorship after which we could establish a new waste processing unit to treat the rest of the wastes," said Ajay Kaushik, station director, Thiruvananthapuram. He also pointed out by appointing more cleaning staff for a second shift, the amount of waste processing per day can be increased.With this Thiruvananthapuram Central became the first railway station in the State to be ISO 14001:2015 certified and has made it to the select list of ISO certified railway stations in Indian Railways.Habibganj railway station in Madhya Pradesh was the first station to be so certified followed by Coimbatore Junction Railway station in Tamil Nadu.