Dreams For A Swachh Navi Mumbai Go Beyond Swachh Survekshan, As City Targets 100 Per Cent Waste Segregation By Year-End

New Delhi: Not just pegged to surveys and Survekshans, Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation aims to maintain cleanliness all the year round. Securing a healthy rank of 8 in Swachh Survekshan 2017, Maharashtra’s newest municipal body maintained its work towards cleaning and managing waste effectively in the city throughout the year. And though Swachh Survekshan 2018’s survey is over, for Navi Mumbai, segregation and waste management has become more about habit and less about rankings.

Segregation continues as usual for Navi Mumbai and has reached an impressive rate of 86 per cent. The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) has managed to increase its rate of segregation by 1 per cent post the Swachh Survekshan survey, as residents continue to segregate dry and wet waste. The municipal body is targeting 100 per cent waste segregation to join the likes of Tirunelveli and Indore, which have successfully managed to segregate waste produced.

Our performance last year motivated us to do even better this time and we realised that a city can become clean only if it remains clean. So we arranged awareness campaigns, asking people to adopt segregation as a way of life rather than merely thinking of it as a method to better our rankings. People complied with our request, resulting in successful segregation in most of Navi Mumbai, said Tushar Pawar, Deputy Commissioner, NMMC.

The ‘My Garbage, My Responsibility’ drive was started in 2017 as the Union Government gave the call for nationwide segregation of waste. Under the drive, collection, segregation and composting became the three principal pillars for NMMC residents to follow. Through workshops and awareness campaigns, NMMC residents were explained the difference between dry and wet waste, the importance of multi-coloured bins, and how compost from wet waste can be utilised. The NMMC also revamped its garbage collection structure, as big housing societies, hotels and shopping malls have been asked to compost their own garbage, thereby significantly reducing the burden on the waste recycling plants and waste collectors.

It took us some time but so far more than 80 per cent big residential societies, restaurants, hotels and malls have regularly composted their own waste. From around 900 metric tonnes of garbage daily, the amount of garbage collected by us has come down to 600 tonnes. In the coming days, we are hopeful that apart from markets and few residential areas, we will not have to collect wet waste from anywhere else. We are hopeful that by the end of this year, we will segregate 100 per cent waste, said Mr Pawar.

Given the rising problem of e-waste, NMMC’s next target is to regularise e-waste collection. A private organisation has been awarded the contract to collect e-waste in Navi Mumbai and will soon install 100 bins throughout the city to collect e-waste. Navi Mumbai is hopeful of being well on track to be adjudged as the cleanest city, when the Swachh Survekshan rankings come out in May this year. With a plan to rope in college students to further create awareness among residents, NMMC’s plans for a garbage free city are taking rapid, successful strides.

Also Read: Oye! Ambala: How In 90 Days The City Won The War Against Waste