Sholinghur has become the first town panchayat in Vellore district to get a plastics waste shredding unit, as part of the State government’s initiatives to free the town of plastics. The unit was inaugurated by Collector Sankar on Tuesday.
Since Sholinghur, which houses the famous hill temple of Sri Narasimha Swamy, attracted a large number of devotees, a lot of garbage was also generated in the town on a daily basis. According to assistant director of town panchayats, Malaiyaman Thirumudikari, an estimated 50 to 60 kg of plastic waste materials was being discarded in the open every day. In order to make use of the plastics, a `8 lakh scheme under the State-sponsored Environment Protection and Renewal Fund was being implemented at present.
The plastics waste shredding unit, housed in a newly constructed building in the town, comprises three machines. The first for cleaning the plastic, the second to compresses it into ingots, and the third to shred it into pellets. While the ingots could be used for laying roads directly, pellets could be reused for making pipes.
Thirumudikari said, if the plastic materials are segregated according to various qualities, the pellets made out of them could be marketed better, with an attractive price as well. The town panchayat which had introduced solid waste management activities long back was now using the personnel, who had now formed a self-help group (Abdul Kalam Self Help Group), for maintaining the plastic shredding unit. Four members of the group had already been trained in Coimbatore, by the manufacturers of the machine. These men would also take care of the accounting and the general management of the unit.
Thirumudikari said, the trial of the unit had started nearly three months back and it has been fine tuned to handle various types of plastic materials. The town panchayat had provided 13 push carts to collect solid wastes including plastics from 10 of the 18 wards in Sholinghur. Each staff would cover 250 to 300 households every day in addition to the 700 plus commercial establishments, including shops, marriage halls and lodges.
The town panchayat is planning to allote some portion of the income from the unit for maintenance of the uniPanapakkam town panchayat in Vellore district would soon have the next plastic shredding units.