Seven coloured boxes have appeared on the Vellayambalam-Sasthamangalam road in Thiruvananthapuram. Each box has pictures on it and labels too: plastic, broken glass, clothes, metal, paper, footwear/ bags and miscellaneous objects. Passersby look curiously before realising that it is to drop their wastes, segregated and neat, into the boxes, newly put there and maintained by the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation.
“It was set up on Environment Day as a message to passersby to stop throwing away waste materials on the road, and to put them into these boxes that we will clear every day,” says junior health inspector Rajesh Kumar. The boxes have been installed in front of the health inspector’s office in Sasthamangalam, and the initiative was inaugurated on Monday by Thiruvananthapuram Mayor VK Prasanth.
Boxes for metal, paper, old bags and footwear
It is a dry waste collection point – meaning no food waste, no liquids. The Corporation will promote food composting at home for that. There is also a temporary stall for giving away free kitchen bins as part of the Environment Day celebrations which have been extended for a week.
An exhibition and seminars for waste management are also being held at the VJT Hall in the city, on Tuesday. Rajan, health inspector, has been at the seminar all morning. “The new boxes in front of the office in Sasthamangalam are kept on an experimental basis. It is mainly for the pedestrians, to discourage them from littering the streets and use the boxes instead. If it works, we will keep such boxes in various parts of the city. Every day, the waste will be cleared by the Corporation and taken to the recovery centres,” Rajan says.
The recovery centres – Material Recovery Centre (MRC) and Resource Recovery Centre – work in different circles of the city. In 25 circles, there are 45 of them. “The MRCs are larger. You can drop plastic waste every day at both MRCs and RRCs. There are specific days to drop other kinds of waste,” says Rajesh, offering a card with these details.
The schedule for dropping specific wastes at the recovery centres
The recovery centres were developed after the Vilappilsala waste management plant was closed down and the process was decentralised.