These days, the Sewage Farm, one of the State’s largest solid waste treatment plants here, is not getting many garbage-laden trucks to unload the city’s trash unlike the past. For, the trash volume has dropped by almost 30 per cent, thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown.
With the closure of markets, malls, commercial operations and eateries, weddings halls and other businesses, the trash load on Mysuru, which was producing 450 tonnes of solid wastes daily, had been largely eased, bringing relief to the garbage collectors.
Sources in the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) told The Hindu that solid waste generation had shrunk in the city by at least 100-150 tonnes a day, easing the task on its collection and disposal from across the city at the treatment plant at Vidyaranypuram which houses a ‘waste-to-compost’ plant as well.
Though the trend had eased their daily chores to some extent, the municipal workers were doing invaluable service donning the roles of ‘Corona Warriors’, keeping the city “dirt-free” and collecting trash from the households despite the threat of the contagion.
Mysuru had hit the headlines nationally after winning the ‘Swachh’ title twice, and setting a benchmark for other cities.
“The lockdown has helped us to assess the extent of garbage generation and its sources. We could study the sources of trash generated daily and its volume in view of dip in generation. With this data, we could be able to strategise our solid waste management plans after the lockdown,” says MCC Health Officer D.G. Nagaraj.
“The large chunk of waste we are getting now is from the households. In our assessment, half of the waste was generated in households and the other half in commercial establishments and markets.”
With no trash seen, Mysuru’s deserted roads are looking more impressive now and pictures of them are trending on social media platforms.
In fact, the MCC had proposed to bio-mine heaps of legacy waste piling up at the Sewage Farm as the plant could handle half of the total waste generated in the city. This led to the piling up of large volumes of untreated waste.
Interestingly, the authorities were hoping to reclaim about 25 acres of government land once the legacy waste is cleared from the plant. The bio-mining procedure involved segregation of waste into organic and inorganic wastes. While organic waste, which can be decomposed, is used as an earthfill, the other is used for purposes such as fuel for cement factories.
