During the 2015 floods, the Central Park South Sholinganallur, was severely affected, as the water entered many apartments and submerged the vehicles.

When the residents gathered to find out why they were so badly hit, they found out that the trash had blocked many of the channels. Later, a few of them tried to change the system by enforcing source segregation.

Initially, a large number of residents were not too keen to segregate their waste. A game plan was devised, said Sumitha Iyer. “We decided to adopt the ‘two bins, one bag’ method, where we have a green bin for the biodegradable waste and red for waste that cannot be recycled and the bag for the recyclables.

We also put together a team of volunteers, one for each block, to deal with issues within that block.” After sensitising the residents, the source segregation was enforced. “For the first two months, we accompanied the housekeeping staff during their daily rounds. We stuck posters on source segregation around the complex. We also enforced penalties such as removing their bins. As the were no community bins, they had to deal with their own trash,” said Sumitha.

The recyclables were sold weekly and till date, Rs 47,000 has been earned by recycling, which is distributed to the housekeeping staff to sensitise them. “We generated 80-100 kilos of wet waste daily, which we didn’t know how to deal with. The Greater Chennai Corporation officials helped us by assigning a person to collect it daily and carting it off to the compost yard in Semmencherry,” said Sumitha, adding that over the past two years, their efforts have resulted in 66 tonnes of waste clogging up the landfills.