CHENNAI:The much-touted Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project that is off to a good start, is likely to have a small component from the Tambaram Municipality — its unique sold waste collection initiative.
Speaking to City Express, municipality officials said that the ‘Tambaram Bins’ initiative was pitched at an international conference on solid waste management/segregation held in Delhi earlier this year, which also saw participation from SAARC nations.
“The Union Ministry of Urban Development has sought a detailed report on the pilot study that we had undertaken,” said an official.
The ‘Tambaram Bins’ initiative, introduced in February 2014, saw the Municipality replace regular open top bins with three closed top structures of green, white and red colour, made of galvanised steel, like the ones in European countries like Germany and Finland. The colours indicate degradable, non degradable and bio-medical waste, each with a capacity to hold nearly 600 kgs. A set of bins cost about Rs 4.50 lakh.
In the pilot phase, bins were installed in five locations along the busy Mudichur Road, where overflowing bins were a common sight and the stench all pervading. A year in, officials said the bins had brought about so much change that one has to see it to believe it.
“Around 80 per cent of the residents in the areas where the bins are located now segregate and dispose off their own waste. Where once the area was unclean and stinking due to perpetual littering, there now are no signs of littered garbage,” said an official.
This has prompted the Municipality to expand the project within its limits with tenders already called for the installation of similar structures in another 10 wards. “We will install the ‘Tambaram bins’ in 157 locations at a cost of Rs 8.76 crore,” the official added.
Making residents responsible for their own garbage in this way was more effective than door-to-door collection and segregation, officials added. “A few city Corporations had tried door-to-door collection but it all failed primarily because the conservancy workers’ timings would not match the schedule of the residents,” an official said.
With the Tambaram bins, on the other hand, conservancy workers are only required to clear the garbage once in every six days. “This has allowed us to reassign conservancy workers for other operations in the wards,” an official said.
