Waste segregation yet to meet desired success

Surat: Residents of the Diamond City are still not latching up to the concept of segregating waste at source.
The Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) had initiated a campaign six months ago to educate people about the importance of waste segregation. SMC had also provided two separate dustbins for organic and inorganic waste. However, till now just barely half of the people segregate waste at source.

SMC gathers 2,000 metric tonnes (MT) of waste from across the city on daily basis. Out of this, 1,100 MT garbage is collected door-to-door.

An official from SMC said that out of total door-to-door collection, just 50% of the waste that comes is segregated, which means only 600 MT of waste comes to SMC in segregated form .

“We get nearly 380 MT of wet waste and nearly 220 dry waste at present. This waste goes to our 600 MT waste converter plant. However, we need better efforts from all to increase this volume, which would reduce our dumping at landfill site and help us achieve our aim,” chief medical officer, SMC, Dr Ashish Naik said.

SMC started scheme of distributing free dustbins to advance tax payers six months ago. Around 70,000 blue dustbin for collection of dry and green dustbin for wet waste were to be distributed to people free of cost. However, only 39,000 have collected their dustbin sets till date.

It also started a scheme of providing free organic waste converter plant for societies spread in 5,000 sq m area , 50% rebate for societies between 5,000 sq m and 20,000 sq m size. However very few have taken the advantage of the scheme of installing organic waste converter in their plot and earn from it.

There are 84 societies more than 20,000 sq m in size who were asked to install organic waste converters. Of these, 54 societies have done so and rest are in the process. Besides these, 30 hotels, 11 commercial institutions also have their own organic waste converters apart from all 35-odd markets in the city.

“If all the people start segregating wet and dry garbage at source, our waste pile up at landfill site would get 50% less garbage daily, which would benefit city immensely,” an officer said.