Trichy fast moving to garbage bin-free status

Garbage bins are fast vanishing from Trichy, Tamil Nadu’s cleanest city as per Swachh Survekshan 2017, a pan-India cleanliness survey conducted by the Union government. Aimed at streamlining residents to hand over the waste generated only to sanitary workers carrying out door-to-door collection, the city corporation has thus far removed 584 garbage bins from public places.
With about 50% of the city’s bins removed, the Urban Local Body (ULB) has planned to cover the entire city under decentralized waste management system which is now centred around micro compost centres (MCC). These centres collect, segregate and dispose of waste within a ward, thus ruling out the need for massive dump yards and bins in residential localities. The ambitious move, meant to ensure that residents hand over routine waste to sanitary workers approaching households every morning, and to free up space occupied by gigantic bins was initiated by civic body in August last year.
According to the corporation, the strategy is to remove the bins from public places so that the patronage for door-to-door waste collection increases besides eliminating the health hazards involving overflowing garbage bins in open places. Having launched door-to-door waste collection in May 5, 2017, civic body found that secondary transportation cost — the cost involved in carrying waste accumulated in public bins to MCCs of respective wards or Ariyamangalam dump yard — was a financial burden. “Apart from door-to-door waste collection, civic body would have to depute another vehicle for collecting waste from public bins. Through the gradual reduction in number of public garbage bins, we can plug the revenue leakage including the transportation cost,” an official with Trichy Corporation said.
Due to the presence of bins in public spots, residents, without availing of door-to-door waste collection, were allegedly dumping domestic waste in public bins. To overcome the constraint, the civic body since August 2017 has been gradually removing public bins from the wards that were covered under MCC and door-to-door waste collection. Till May, Trichy Corporation has removed about 584 garbage bins and around 10 wards in the city have become bin-free. Bins in the city have been classified as compactor and container bins with compactor bins capable of storing waste up to 1.1 cubic metre. The massive container bins can store waste between 2.5 cubic metre and 8 cubic metre in capacity.
“We have removed a total of 416 compactor bins and 168 container bins. That’s almost 50 % of the bins that existed in the city. Once micro compost yards cover more number of wards, the number of bins removed will increase further,” the official added. Corporation sources said that garbage bins in commercial areas would remain undisturbed as of now. Corporation has also planned to install MCC at eight more spots to improve the coverage under decentralised waste collection.

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