Residents of a Pune society resolve to become garbage-free

Lunkad Greenland II, a housing society in Vimannagar comprising 57 flats and approximately 140 residents, has vowed to become completely ‘garbage-free’.

In a seminar conducted recently, residents from the society as well as several other societies in Vimannagar were apprised of the techniques of recycling plastic, which forms the largest part of the dry garbage collected by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). This dry waste is dumped extensively in landfills around the city, or flows into the rivers, causing grave harm to the ecology.

Lalit Rathi from Clean Garbage Management Pvt Ltd said, “Garbage becomes ‘goods’ after it leaves your home. All plastic garbage, including that which is not picked by rag pickers such as bottles, grocery packets, milk packets, straws, plastic cups, spoons, kurkure/chips packets, has a value, and can be sold to us. We recycle the plastic to make commercially useful products.”

The raw material (waste plastic) is bought from the participating society for a price — Rs3 per kg for wrappers, Rs10 per kg for packets, including milk — and is converted into goods ranging from garden benches, moulded containers, waterproof sheets, pipes to synthetic yarn by Rathi’s company.

Chairman of the society and rainwater harvesting expert, Col (retd) SG Dalvi told DNA, “Lunkad Greenland II is a ‘green’ society. We have been recycling wet waste in vermiculture pits. Apart from having an efficient rainwater harvesting system, we are also saving up to 30% on our energy bills by switching to CFLs in all common areas. After implementing this initiative, our society will not give any garbage to PMC at all.”

Member of Wanavdi Resident’s Forum, National Society for Clean Cities (NSCC) and the driving force behind the initiative, Susan Raj, extolled residents to segregate their garbage at source, which is the first step towards ensuring efficient garbage management.

“We are ready to provide managing committees with copies of Supreme Court’s order of 2000 so they can enforce segregation at source in their societies. We must fulfil the duty towards our rivers and ecology,” she said.