While the civic body has largely abandoned its plan to get homes to segregate their waste, members of St Michael’s Church in Mahim have adopted the project.
While the civic body has largely abandoned its plan to get homes to segregate their waste, members of St Michael’s Church in Mahim have adopted the project.
Since last one week, 10 families in the parish have started segregating their garbage — while dry or recyclable items like plastic, paper and metal are given to rag-pickers, the wet waste is turned into garden compost. The families that have volunteered will try the programme for three months. Depending on their success, it will be adopted in the entire parish.
The aim of the project is to make homes ‘zero garbage’ to reduce pressure on the dwindling dump yards and save the environment by encouraging reuse of inorganic waste.
This was started as a project for senior students of the church’s Sunday school. Michelle Fernandes, a member of the parish who teaches at the Sunday school said, “The amount of garbage that we generate is a lot and the consequences can be seen on our garbage-filled roads.”
But it’s not been without hiccups. One problem facing the households is where to compost the wet garbage without neighbours complaining about the smell and flies. Some families have created composting pits in their building’s compound where the garbage is mixed with a culture containing organisms to speed the process.
“A lot of work is required in terms of bringing about a change in habits, as many feel apprehensive of generating vermicompost at home,” said Fernandes.
The residents are being helped by an NGO Garbage Concern led by Francin Pinto, a former lecturer in zoology at Mumbai university. His group propagates the message of ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ waste.
With the city’s garbage dumps running out of space, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had made it compulsory for households and housing societies to segregate garbage into wet and dry waste. It even announced fines of up to Rs1,000 on housing societies and families that failed to segregate their garbage.
The project has been abandoned though some residents groups do it in their areas.
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