Madurai Corporation to start dry waste collection centres in eight places

MADURAI: Following the success of the ‘Bucket Challenge’, a programme carried out by the Madurai City Municipal Corporation during the Pongal festival to encourage residents to deposit waste meant to be burnt on the Bhogi day, the civic body is planning to start eight permanent dry waste collection centres in the city.


Corporation commissioner Aneesh Sekhar on Wednesday visited Sathamangalam ward office, where the waste collected during the bucket challenge programme -- conducted between January 11 and 22 -- was kept.

Of the eight tonne of waste collected, one tonne was electronic waste and five tonne was cloth waste. The remaining was glass and other waste. The Madurai Corporation collected the waste at 40 designated centres along with KuppaiKaran, an NGO

Sekhar said if these waste materials had been burnt, it would have added to the environmental pollution. The collected waste would be recycled, and the money generated from it would be used for the activities under Swachh Bharat Mission, he said.

Sekhar said the corporation planned to motivate school students and residents to deposit the dry waste in the permanent collection centres by incentivising them. The places would be identified in a couple of weeks. Mostly defunct toilets and old corporation buildings would be used to store the collected waste.

Unlike, segregation of waste into just degradable and non-degradable, which is being insisted on at the household level, the waste collected at the permanent collection centres would be segregated into six types of waste like e-waste, glass waste, cloth waste, plastic waste and so on.

Talking about the smart city project work, Sekhar said the construction work of Periyar Bus Terminal would start from Thursday. While the terminal would be shut, the city buses would be operated from various spots. Similarly, the construction work for the other projects under the smart city mission would start in two days.