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    Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli becomes first city to have 100% waste segregation

    Synopsis

    ​​The city, with a population of 4.8 lakh, achieved this at a time when other cities are either weighing the risk of failure before starting any initiative or considering imposition of penalties on erring residents.

    waste
    Tirunelveli, which has around 1.6 lakh households, took up this challenge in April 2016. (Representational Image)
    (This story originally appeared in on Mar 06, 2017)
    NEW DELHI: It took barely a few months for Tirunelveli municipality in Tamil Nadu to achieve the feat of achieving 100% segregation of waste at source across households and establishments. It involved securing undertakings from each household to segregate biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste, campaigns though TV and local radio channels targeting housewives and roping in religious leaders and NGOs.

    The city, with a population of 4.8 lakh, achieved this at a time when other cities are either weighing the risk of failure before starting any initiative or considering imposition of penalties on erring residents. The Tirunelveli model can be easily adopted by other cities.

    Tirunelveli, which has around 1.6 lakh households, took up this challenge in April 2016. However, an intensive campaign started only on October 2, taking cue from the Solid Waste Management Rules 2016, which make it mandatory for all waste generators to segregate biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste before disposal, and hand over the segregated waste to authorised waste pickerswaste collectors.

    Delighted at Tirunelveli's achieve ment of becoming the first Indian city to achieve 100% segregation of waste at source, municipal commissioner S Sivasubramanian told TOI, “Our sanitation workers went to each house, collected an undertaking from each of them saying that they will segregate waste at home. We distributed two waste bins to every household.I wrote personal letters to each house to make this a success and we made public announcements using loudspeakers across the city for two months.“

    He said they were surprised to see that only eight households did not segregate the waste after they kicked off the initiative. “We collected Rs 10 per household as service charge for this. Now, everyone is complying with the change. What we realised is that people will do their bit if we in the administration take required steps,“ the commissioner said.

    While biodegradable waste is collected every day , non-biodegradable waste such as plastic is collected every Wednesday . Sivasubramanian said all municipal staff were deployed only for “outdoor duty“ on Wednesdays, which meant no one was in office on that day .“Everyone reports to duty at 6am and all senior officials lead this initiative,“ he added.


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