CHENNAI: Though Chennai’s Municipal Solid Waste has reduced by almost 35 per cent, waste segregation has become zero in the past one month, putting a halt to Corporation’s ambitious zero-waste initiative.
As per the latest Corporation data, eight Corporation zones have recorded ‘zero’ in waste segregation while the rest too have done very minimal segregation
Corporation officials said the waste segregation centres are closed as all the ground staff are into door-to-door screening and in disinfectant activities.
Totally 163 metric tonnes of wet waste and 128 mt of dry waste has been segregated with Zone 4 Tondiarpet segregating the most up to 64 mts of waste.
Totally, 3622 mt of waste has been collected from across the city, against the overall average of 5,000 mt tones. This trend of a 35 per cent decrease has been steady ever since March 22, when lockdown began.
In this, 3331 mts of unsegregated waste has gone to landfill. Officials said this was mainly due to closure of bulk waste generators such as malls, top companies and industries in the city.
Meanwhile, the Koyambedu market has generated 159 tonnes of waste as of April 15. Corporation staff have totally made 877 trips during waste collection.