Campaign On Solid Waste Management
Students and Self-Help Group members at a campaign on solid waste management at Vadavalli, near the city. The Vadavalli Town Panchayat is working on decentralised disposal of garbage as its efforts for a centralised disposal system had met with resistance from the public, town panchayat president S. Amirthavalli said recently. Small sites in individual wards were being seen as the option to dispose of the waste in this developing suburb and overcome resistance from people who did not want this process to be carried out in their houses. Ms. Amirthavalli explained the town panchayat’s plans while inaugurating a campaign on “Environmental Protection and Waste segregation for Composting under Solid Waste Management” at Chikkarayapuram recently, organised by Non-Conventional Energy and Rural Development Society.
As part of the campaign, school students and teachers took out a rally to stress segregation of waste at source. According to a release from the society, the local body head said the Self-Help Group (SHG) members were roped in for door-to-door collection of waste three years ago. But, the waste could not be converted into manure for want of a site for this process. Earlier, the panchayat decided to have a centralised treatment site for all the 18 wards. But, this plan had to be dropped because of the opposition from the local communities.
The panchayat decided to have decentralised treatment sites for the waste collected from two or three wards. The plan was to get the support of the people and even involve them in this process. Ms. Amirthavalli thanked the people of Chikkarayapuram and the councillors of wards 14 and 15 for offering land for the treatment of waste collected from their areas. This would motivate other communities and councillors to promote decentralised treatment in their wards.
Society president K. Sathiyajothi said her organisation was able to eliminate the NIMBY (not in my back yard) syndrome among the people that led to their opposing waste treatment near their houses. She said it was possible to convince the community to have the treatment site in their area by enrolling them as SHGs. Scientific treatment that eliminated odour and kept flies and mosquitoes away would make this effort successful. Seven women SHGs and two youth SHGs had been formed by the society. This effort covered 150 families. Now the segregation of waste was also becoming an easy task since the people themselves were keen on better sanitation in their neighbourhood.
Meetings of the groups or federation (a group of SHGs) were held to discuss implementation.The message is getting reached easily through the SHG movement. The collection of waste and segregation was carried out by the women SHG members. The Youth SHG was undertaking the installation of a treatment plant at Chikkarayapuram. Manure would be made out of waste through normal composting and vermi composting. Efforts were being made to promote a marketing SHG so that the organic manure made from waste could be sold and the money could be used to sustain the project.
