Clean the city

This Environmental Day, Our Team in Mettupalayam decided to do something that is not new to few of us at least, we have done City cleaning, Campus Cleaning as part of our Nature Club activity during college days on many occasions.

But one realization, Nature Club of KCT did to me is "Nothing can happen in one day. Consistent doing of the act is what most needed". Thanks to Nature Club :) Keeping the Golden Rule in mind, thought not just to clean the place, but take necessary steps to make people aware and put things in place, so the place shall remain clean.

All these running in my mind. We did our cleaning activities for three days covering residential areas where there are schools and religious places. As known already things like overflowing dustbins, dustbins placed where it shouldn't be and no dustbins where it is most needed was not surprising. On other hand few things were very surprising and shocking like bio-medical wastes road side, "No partition inside the Municipal or Corporation dustbins, but Degradable Waste and Non-Degradable Wastes written both the sides of the bin in bold letters.

I would like to share few challenges ahead, from the experience I gained from cleaning activities done in Vadavalli for Kovai Vizha, Campus Cleaning in 2010 and 2011 in KCT till this Environmental day cleaning drive.

Challenge ahead of us: 

(Challenges listed here are what is faced throughout India. Images are only for educational purpose. It does not limit only to that place or locality)

No Proper Infrastructure In-place for Waste Collection and Segregation

The current system in place is where a municipal employee comes door-to-door collecting wastes. The small collection boxes are differentiated with two colors Red and Green. I believe the red for "Non Degradable Waste" and Green for "Degradable Wastes".

Even when we segregate the wastes and drop them separately. The final destination these wastes reaches is the massive dustbins placed either at the corner of the streets (if it is placed) or waste mountains. If it is the massive dustbins, the unknown truth to many is, only we have text written outside. There is no actual partition inside the bins.

Recently, I was in Germany, just like to share the waste collection methodology followed there only for information purpose, not to compare meaning anything else. 

Every house in Germany will have multicoloured dustbins where the wastes are segregated during the use by house-holds. Once in a week or two weeks, the collection vehicle will come and collect these wastes at every house. If they find that waste are not segregated properly then there is a chance that they may not collect the same or collect it with a penalty. We can dump the waste in Road side or any other place.

I don't see any difficulty in implementing similar method here. We already have a similar mechanism, but modification are needed after a thorough study.

Below picture shows dustbins placed in front of school (top and bottom right corner images), despite that wastes are dumped aside school (main image). Also no dustbin in-front of Temple, which is completely a residential area.

Even I noticed many dustbins are filled up completely, but may be since the corporation or municipality does not empty them on-time, leading people dumped the waste outside or burn the wastes by firing them inside the bin.

Handling of Bio-Medical Wastes and E-Wastes

Apart the plastics and food wastes scattered on the road side. We were able to recover some Medical wastes like used injections, sanitary napkin, etc. and E-Waste like used battery, cell, bulbs, copper wires.

Here it is the duty of the Medical Institutions and regulations from the local authorities only can make the handling better. Though we have Bio-Medical Waste Rules - 1998 - 
http://www.mppcb.nic.in/bio-medical_waste.htm,  still some gaps are to be filled.

"Turning waste management into resource management" is possible in India. Germany and other European countries consider "Waste as a source of raw materials.". We can try to recycle the food waste at home.

Two methods from http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/node/6043 website might help people interested :

• The first, In-vessel composting, involves mixing food waste with garden waste, shredding it and composting it in a tunnel or container for around two to four weeks. Temperatures of up to 70 degrees C speed up the process and kill any harmful microbes. It is then left for a further 1-3 months with regular turning and checks to ensure quality, before going on to be used as soil conditioner.
• The second method, Anaerobic Digestion, uses micro-organisms called 'methanogens' to break down food waste, animal manures and energy crops in the absence of oxygen, inside an enclosed tank. As it breaks down, it gives off 'bio-gas' that is collected and used to generate electricity, heat or transport fuels. It also creates biofertiliser, which can be used in farming and land regeneration.

Stop Plastic Bags - Use Paper Bags

Government should take necessary actions to ban the usage of plastics and we citizens should stand by stop using Plastics Bags. We can use paper bags or cloth bags.

At this juncture, I would like to thank the Team worked for the Cleanliness Drive organised for Environmental Day 2014

1. Prabhu R
2. Jayaraj Kumar R
3. Saravanan V
4. Praveen Kumar 
5. Gowtham S
6. Prasanna Kumar
7. Sunny Thomas

Last but an important point from my side is "Clean MTP or Clean Kovai or Clean India" should not be the term. Then people would continue the act, so someone will Clean.

It should be "Keep India Clean"