Disposing of plastic bottles won't so much be a problem any more. The Indian Railways will be installing 68 bottle crushing machines at various railway stations. This comes at a time when the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation removed such machines from footpaths.
Both the Western and Central Railway will be installing these bottle crushing machines at 50 different suburban railway stations. "We will be installing 35 machines at 17-18 different stations," confirmed SK Jain, Divisional Railway Manager (Mumbai), Central Railway.
This would mean that each station will have two such machines. Similarly, the WR authorities will be installing 25 bottle crushing machines. There will be one each in every railway station. Sources said that they will be starting with railway stations that record maximum footfall. These are stations that see over 2-3 lakh commuters daily.
Each machine costs around Rs 70-75 lakh and very soon tenders will be floated for the installation work. Right now the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has installed four such bottle crushing machines — two at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus and one each at Churchgate and Mumbai Central stations.
Sources said that in all, the IRCTC will be getting eight bottle crushing machines, including the four mentioned above, and divide those between WR and CR. Last year, the Railways had installed 10 such machines at different stations, which, however, were removed due to issues with the contractor. These had recycled 6 lakh plastic bottles in 11 months.
Bottle crushing machines are important as the Indian Railways supplies 'Rail Neer' (bottled water) to railway stations. Standing at a whopping 1.80 lakh litre of bottled water, the bottling plant in Ambernath supplies the largest consignment to the Indian Railways. At present, passengers either buy the 1 litre Rail Neer bottles or use water vending machines that provide water in plastic glasses.
The Central Railway requires 45,893 litre of water, while the Western Railway needs 37,447 litre of water.
MUCH NEEDED
- Bottle crushing machines are important as the Indian Railways supplies bottled water to railway stations.
- A whopping 1.80 lakh litre of bottled water is supplied by the Ambernath bottling plant, the largest consignment to the Indian Railways.
