Ahead of the Central Government’s Swachh Sarvekshan, exercise to rank cities based on cleanliness, the Coimbatore Corporation has placed plastic bins across the city.
The bins, placed in pairs – blue for recyclable waste and green for degradable waste, dot the commercial areas across the five zones and is intended for shoppers and visitors to those areas.
The Corporation officials say they had placed 500 pairs of bins – 100 pairs each for the five zones – at ₹42.50 lakh to collect waste that gets generated in commercial areas. But the Corporation placing the bins ahead of the Swachh Sarvekshan ranking appears to be a repetition of the exercise it carried out a couple of years ago by placing moveable plastic bins at a few places in the city.
Sources in the Corporation admit that plastic bins were placed ahead of the clean cities ranking a few years ago, and were removed after the ranking exercise was over. But this time, the bins are fixed on cement platforms and they are permanent structures.
The conservancy workers who operate battery-run or waste collection auto rickshaws will collect waste from these bins for processing.
Mere placing of bins is not enough for Coimbatore Corporation to improve the city's Swachh Sarvekshan ranking in 2019 because a lot has to be done on the door-to-door waste collection front, the civic body officials said.
Though the Corporation claims it has achieved 80 % door-to-door waste collection, the ground reality is different in that the number of houses covered is far fewer.
The Corporation also needs to improve the door-to-door waste collection to keep up with its commitment given to the National Green Tribunal.