Newsfeature | e-Waste
india’s first e-waste clinic to come up in bhopal Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) has launched multiple initiatives in their campaign for a better position in Swachh Survekshan. The Corporation has recently launched an E-waste collection model that is helping clean out the city more effeciently Abhilash Khandekar Senior Journalist
T
he Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has indeed taken the cleanliness initiative of the Prime Minister very seriously. And for the good of its citizens! While the biggest city of the state, Indore, topped the chart of the cleanest city competition for three successive years with its various novel methods, many other cities of the state have also fared well on this score. Bhopal, said to be one of the greenest capitals of the country, with beautiful natural features like lakes, hills and forested areas, has also been launching multiple initiatives to keep the city spic and span; the latest of the measures being the e-waste collection model launched by the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC). Earlier, the decades-old large Bhanpur dumping ground’s garbage that weighed in several thousand metric tonnes and which was set to acquire the shape and size similar to Delhi’s infamous Ghazipur garbage dump, was treated in phases and the entire area has been cleaned up. Once it was seen to be a real challenge for the city managers, but now the levelled ground there shows the good amount of work put in.
36 February 2020 | www.urbanupdate.in
Door-to-door daily collection of domestic garbage and putting up biodegradable and non- biodegradable waste bins all over has now resulted in a remarkable change, with Bhopal becoming largely a litter-free city in the last over two years of sustainable efforts. Bhopal is pitching up for the top slot in the All India competition with a number of technological innovations in place. Now, the Sarthak Plastic Waste Management Ragpickers Upliftment Project, being implemented in association with United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) technical guidance, has focussed its attention on what is known as the world wide threat to environment electronic waste! The NGO had already implemented plastic-free Bhopal campaign with a degree of success and that ‘Bhopal Model’ is being replicated in many cities across India, says Imtiaz Ali, Sarthak President. The ragpickers, numbering over 2200 in the capital city, have been trained over the years by Sarthak and BMC and now having been able to successfully segregate plastic, metal and other waste, some of them are being trained for e-waste collection and its proper disposal. Most ragpickers are now making `100250 per day. Like most Indian cities, Bhopal too generates huge amount of plastic waste. According to the BMC Commissioner Vijay Datta, IAS, close to 11 MT plastic waste is generated
in the city daily, besides other wastes which also include tetra packs, double coated plastic sheets, rubber footwear and glass bottles. The e-waste collection model is not much different but yes, the non-profit Sarthak Group has now kept a large number of dedicated e-waste bins in the city with the help of MP Pollution Control Board, in addition to plying
Representative Image
