Waste management in Steel City via QR code

ROURKELA: The Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) will soon launch QR code enabled waste monitoring under its Advanced Waste Management System to streamline door-to-door garbage collection and ensure cleanliness of public and community toilets across the city. 

Initially, around 10,000 households and buildings including public toilets will be covered under the project, which will be launched within a week. The civic body is focusing on collection of segregated household waste for processing at micro-composting centres and material recovery facilities. It has pressed into service battery operated and light commercial vehicles and engaged Swachha Sathis, supervisors and NGO volunteers for waste segregation across the city. 

The civic body has been receiving complaints on irregular waste collection and in order to address the issue, it brought in the QR code-based monitoring system to streamline the process, said RMC Commissioner Dibyajyoti Parida. The initiative is also aimed at improving the city’s ranking in the national cleanliness survey. He said QR code tags will be fixed on individual households and buildings.

Apartments and flats will be clubbed as a single entity and given a common QR code. Sanitation workers of the respective wards will be required to scan the QR code on mobile phones for recording relevant data and the same will be monitored at RMC’s control room. “If a worker fails to scan the QR code or does not collect garbage from any household, we will know it immediately,” Parida said. 

After successful implementation of the pilot project, the civic body will try to cover all households and buildings across the city under the system. The QR code tags at community and public toilets will have a feedback system enabling users to rate their experience and sanitation status of the toilets.