Trichy Corpn bags Skoch award for solid waste management

Trichy corporation has bagged the order-of-merit award for decentralised solid waste management and the platinum award for overall performance at the 49th Skoch Summit at New Delhi. Skoch Foundation, the Gurgaon-based independent group dealing with socio-economic issues, made the announcement on Saturday.
The city corporation had presented a project on decentralised solid waste management through micro composting with community participation in July at an event organised by the foundation in Mumbai. "Our project was selected from among top 50 cities out of the nearly 1,000 entries and order-of-merit awarded under Swachh Bharat Mission," said executive engineer S Amudhavalli who received the award on behalf of the corporation. "We exhibited our project at New Delhi on Saturday and based on the voting of the delegates, got platinum award," she said.

Under fire for poor management of waste, the civic body had decided to decentralise waste collection a year ago for effective disposal. The decentralised mode is being effectively employed in the city through micro composting with community participation.
The city has four micro compost units started on a pilot basis in each zone. The first unit, raised at a cost of Rs 29.78 lakh, became functional in October last year at Pookkollai on Thanjavur road. It covers about 3,000 households in ward number 14 and 21 at Ariyamangalam.
Every unit is equipped with compost shredding and vermin-composting units and dry waste is collected from the residents on a weekly basis by women self-help groups. The waste is shredded and sent for reuse. Similarly, wet or organic waste is collected every day and brought to the vermicomposting units. The organic waste is turned into manure and excess waste despatched to the methanation plant and gassiffier run by the city corporation depending on its requirement.
A year down the lane, this far-sighted approach has started yielding results and a significant quantity of waste generated in the city could be prevented from going to the Ariyamangalam dumping yard as land fill. Micro compost yards are being planned in 14 other places at a cost of Rs 7.17 crore to cover the whole city to achieve zero waste dumping at Ariyamangalam. Last year, the city bagged the award for best practices in community toilets. It was awarded in 2015 as well for effective solid waste management by monitoring the solid waste generated in the city through radio frequency identification (RFID) system.