CHENNAI: Chennai, a city once bountiful with water resources, has been facing a water crisis for the past few years. The reasons range from failed monsoons and lack of oxygen in the water, to no organism-friendly lakes and garbage dumps. While on one hand we deal with these crises, we also fail to take care of the existing water bodies. The reports from Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board claim that life found on the lakes of Adyar, Cooum, and Buckingham Canal are all dead now. And at this rate, it is important to direct attention to reducing pollution and making it a bigger problem than it is now.
“Though the city corporation and NGOs work on minimising garbage, especially plastic dump that poses a serious threat to the environment, into lakes and rivers, this has been a recurring problem,” says Shanmukha Priya Chadarada, strategic partnerships manager, Plastic Fischer India. The technology-based social enterprise, having set up a base in other cities of the country, is expanding its operations and services to Chennai. After having an inspection team work on ground for six months, the enterprise is certain to work on lakes, water channels, and estuaries in the city. The plan is to prevent plastic and other dumps that flow through these waterbodies from entering the ocean, as plastic pollution is increasing at an alarming rate.
They’re working on lines of 3L — Low cost (utilizing local, affordable, and scalable services), Low tech (quick repair and easy maintenance), and the prime L, Locally (provide full-time job opportunities). With the mission to protect ocean biodiversity by collecting plastics in rivers with efficient technology, trashboom (developed by Plastic Fischer) acts as a barrier that breaks off the running of plastic even before it reaches waterways. A Material Recovery Facility (MRF), occupying 4,000-5,000 sq.ft., is to be set up that could store and manage up to 20 tonnes of plastic a month.
The plastic and leaking materials collected from trashboom are later segregated into organic and non-organic materials. The organic and recyclables are introduced into the local market for sale and are brought back into the supply chain. On the other hand, the non-organic and non-recyclables are co-processed with a local tie-up.
The start-up’s vision is to create 75 full-time job opportunities, deploy 40 systems across cities, expand to seven other cities and collect around 1,000 tonnes of plastic and other garbage by this year. With government approvals, an in-depth survey is to be launched.
The results of the survey will help determine the locations for deployment of MRF, get accurate measurements and plan a deployment schedule. “To increase the impact of the mission that Plastic Fischer is set on, a beach and lake clean-up was organised at Varanasi, Kanpur, Trivandrum and Mangalore. School students and corporate employees participated to show their support. Similarly, we want to give a call for action to aquapreneurs, NGOs and corporates in Chennai to come forward in bringing a better environment together,” says Shanmukha.