National Park to Become Plastic Free
If you are at Sanjay Gandhi National Park lately and
happen to find the place, no more littered with plastics,
it’s thanks to the Indian Centre for Plastics in the Environment,
which has taken up the initiative to make the
park ‘cleaner and greener’.
It was after about two months of dialogues with the
forest officials, finally the green signal was given for this
project whose main aim was to free national park from
plastic. The system by which this is to be done is by regularly
collecting the plastics and along with it also provides
a two bin system for dry and wet garbage. This
makes it easy for the rag pickers employed here to separate
the plastics and further send it for recycling.
The last few days have seen the cleaning and removal
of garbage collected at areas like Devipada, Trimurti and
other areas inside the park. T.K. Bandopadhyay and
Shrinivasan of ICPE, who are incharge of the project, were
in the park when the cleaning operation was being carried
out. They felt that it was because of the help received
from the BMC which saw the cleaning and removal of
garbage especially for areas like Trimurti, which had become
small dumping grounds.
Shrinivasan informed, “The condition was such that
plastics could not be segregated as the materials kept
inside had gone rotten.” He further added, “Six rag pickers,
who stay in the park itself have been appointed to
collect plastics with one supervisor to monitor them and
two co-ordinators to manage the whole project.” They
were also planning to launch an awareness campaign
and educate people not to throw wet waste inside plastics
bags. The plastic thus collected would be stored in a
room already provided by the park authorities who have
also promised the team tractors for carrying the wastes
in the park and then it would be sent for recycling and
also for fuel production at Nagpur. Thus the whole idea
of this team is to provide a sustainable project, which
would go on, and for this, people participation is a must
as tourists should also be advised to avoid littering plastics
in the park.
Speaking about the Indian Center for Plastics in the
Environment (ICPE), Technical Manager T.K.
Bandopadhyay says, “On the recommendation of a task
force constituted by the Ministry of Environment and
Forestry, as a result of a suggestion as per the Supreme
Court’s judgment, this organisation was formed as a nodal
agency to look into all the environmental issues regarding
plastics.” He further informed that none of the agencies
told them to look into the plastic menace in the Park,
but it was the decision of ICPE to take on this project and
save the green lungs of Mumbai.
Plastic Surgery for Roads
Mr. Datta Dalvi, Mayor of Mumbai,
has been on a raiding spree. The
target of his ire: the ubiquitous plastic
bag, of which he’s confiscated 2.5
tonnes.
The evils of the plastic bag - the ones
less than 20 microns in thickness and
thrown away after one use - need no
reiteration. Ragpickers don’t find it profitable
to collect them, and the non-biodegradable
monsters mostly lie around,
playing havoc with the city’s drainage
and environment. In Mumbai the plastic
waste menace is a serious one
- on an average, the city produces
40 tonnes of plastic waste daily of
which only five tonnes are recycled
through ragpickers.
But now there’s solution in
sight, and the city’s roads will provide
it. Only, the plastic won’t be
flung on the roads but into them.
Reusing plastic waste to pave
roads is an experiment that’s been successfully
conducted in many other
places such as Kalamasseri in Kerala,
Kolkata and Bangalore. Not only does
the road become a receptacle for plastic
waste but also gives a better grip. The
plastic also brings down the quantity of
bitumen used by 10%.
Mumbai caught on to the idea two
years ago, when the BMC’s road department
experimented on a few roads at
Prabhadevi. Right now it is in the process
of fine-tuning and has appointed
an NGO, the Indian Centre for Plastics
in the Environment (ICPE), to provide
shredded plastics. “We are working on
the project along with ICPE, but there’s
been a delay because they’ve been unable
to set up a shredder so far;” says
Mr. J. T. Barbhaya, Deputy Municipal
Commissioner in charge of roads. Mr.
T. K. Bandopadhyay, Technical Manager,
ICPE, however, assures that the
project will be underway in the next one
month. “The cost will be negligible as
the plastic will be provided by the civic
solid waste department,” he says.
The plastic road show has
been on in some other cities for a
while - the Rajagiri College of Social
Sciences at Kalamasseri took
the lead to show that plastic waste
can be used very effectively in the
laying of roads in Kolkata. The
Metropolitan Planning Committee
has advised the civic authorities to lay polymer-blend bituminous roads,
and the Bangalore Municipal Corporation,
with the help of Bangalore
University’s Centre for Transportation
Engineering, has already laid 35 km of
roads with the newly developed compound.
How does it work? The plastic
waste is collected, shredded and added
to the aggregate (metal) which is then
heated to 170°C. At 140°C, the plastic
melts (which takes about 30 seconds)
and sticks to the metal. The burning
does not emit pollutants, and the plastic
waste not only binds the metal but
also increases durability and longevity
of the road. A win-win situation for
all.
(As reported in Times of India,
Mumbai,13th June, 2005)
Ban on Sachet Water Not Solution to
Plastic Menace - Taskforce
The National Plastic Waste Management Taskforce (NPWMT) in Ghana,
recently said the ban on the sale of sachet water would not be a solution
to the plastic menace in the metropolis. Mr. Devine Otoo, Chairman of
NPWMT, therefore appealed to government to enact a law to compel polluters
to pay levies on their products. Speaking in an interview, Mr. Otoo
said polluters had expressed their readiness
to pay the levy to find a lasting solution to
plastic waste.
He said the Ministry of Environment
and Science was steadily working on the
law and appealed to government to expedite
action and provide the NPWMT with
more logistics for their operations. Mr. Otoo
said the use of plastics had become indispensable
in the country and stressed the
need for institutions to educate the public on its management.
He said the National Association of Sachet Water Producers and Ghana
National Plastic Manufacturers Association and Accra Metropolitan Assembly
were assisting the Taskforce with 40-50 vehicles in the “Operation
Chase the Plastics” programme.
The operation, he said, would overhaul the system of plastic waste as well
as generate interest and raise awareness of the public on plastics collection.
He said, under the programme the Taskforce would employ close to
over 2,000 people to assist in the collection of plastics in the metropolis
starting from May 21, 2005.
“Under the programme, we hope to get-evidence of our work in the city
within a six-month period,” he said adding, “all we need is to get the relevant
facilities to work with.” He expressed hope that the programme would
be extended to the regional capitals.
Mr. Otoo called for more education on waste disposal stressing, “If
people stop littering and plastic waste is disposed off in bins, its management
will become easier and the cost of managing the waste will reduce.” Mr. Derrick Ayeh, Managing Director of Plastic Waste Management Ghana
Limited, said his firm was engaged in collecting plastic waste in the metropolis
and had so far exported 160,000 tonnes of plastics to Asia and
North America.
Mr. Ayeh identified the segregation of waste as a major problem confronting
their operation.
(Source: Ghana News Agency)
(Reproduced from Eco-Echoes, Vol. 6 Issue-2, ICPE News Letter)
World Environment
Day 2005 Green
Cities, Plan for the
Planet!
World Environment Day is commemorated
each year on 5th June
and is one of the principal vehicles
through which the United Nations
stimulates worldwide awareness of the
environment and enhances political attention
and action.
This year’s theme for World Environment
Day was Green Cities and the
slogan was Plan for the Planet!
The aims of the celebration of World
Environment Day (WED) are to promote
an understanding that communities
are pivotal to changing attitudes towards
environmental issues and advocate
partnership which will ensure all
nations and people enjoy a safer and
more prosperous future among others.
Please check http://www.unep.org for
further information and events
organised worldwide as part of the 2005
WED.
The theme of Green Cities was destined
to highlight efforts made for and
by cities - where demographic growth,
poverty and ill health are intertwined
and the most challenging - in the environmentally
sound management of their
infrastructure and to encourage similar
efforts and partnerships where they are
most needed.
The Basel Convention Secretariat
took advantage of the occasion of WED
to highlight its activities that are linked
to the theme of Green Cities. These are
two projects, known as the ‘Municipalities’
projects, which are being carried
out in the cities of Qingdao, China
and Guayaquil, Ecuador. The projects
come under the New Partnership with
Local Authorities for the Environmentally
Sound Management of
Hazardous and Other Wastes (in the
context of the implementation of the
Strategic Plan of the Basel Convention,
adopted in 2002) and are both undertaken
in partnership with the UN Institute
for Training and Research’s Decentralized
Cooperation Programme.
(Source: www.basel.int)
(Reproduced from Eco-Echoes, Vol. 6
Issue-2, ICPE News Letter)
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