Garbage load drops, roads a lot cleaner than ever

Nivedha Selvam | Apr 8, 2020, 04:10 IST

Coimbatore: The lockdown seems to be helping the city a bit more than just containing the spread of Covid-19. Ever since the curfew came into force, the city roads have been cleaner than ever before, with less garbage strewn around. The waste being generated by the city has also reduced by 200 tonnes a day. According to a source with the civic body, the city’s garbage load has come down to 800-850 tonnes from 1,000-1,100 tonnes.
A senior city corporation official, who didn’t want to be named, said, “We have been seeing a considerable difference in the quantity of garbage that the city generates a day after the lockdown came into force. As most of the commercial establishments and eateries remain shut, the garbage load has come down by 200 tonnes a day.”
While the wet waste collected from households in certain areas are sent to the micro composting centres directly, wet and dry waste from other areas are taken to the dump yard at Vellalore, he said. There are 20 micro composting centres that are functional in the city.
Pointing out that they earlier used to collect a lot of cardboard boxes, which were used by e-commerce sellers, and plastic boxes that were used by online food delivery services, the official said those two items were hardly seen in garbage piles nowadays.
A sanitary supervisor said, “Cool drinks bottles were a major part of the garbage earlier. Today, the number of bottles has also come down by 50%.”
He said people have started using vegetables and other essential items carefully as they were afraid that might be in short supply soon. “As a result, the quantity of wet waste that is generated in houses has come down. The households that were producing 500g of wet waste earlier are generating just 250g or less today. In the case of dry waste, we do not get anything other than covers and papers.”
He said they had strictly instructed the public to segregate the waste while handing that over to them following the widespread coronavirus scare. “We refuse to collect the mixed waste. So, most of the households have started to segregate the waste at source.”
Explaining that only the people, who were not segregating the waste, were dumping the same in garbage carts, the sanitary supervisor said the cart clearing trucks were making only a trip presently, instead of two to three trips in the recent past.