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Day Two of the plastic ban, and citizens are facing an icky conundrum—What to put the wet waste in?
Since the last couple of days, they have been managing somehow. On the first day of the plastic ban, many used the same old banned black garbage bags to dispose trash and Sunday was the waste pickers’ day off. Monday will bring in new challenges in disposing of wet waste.
“We have a lot of wet waste in the house, from thick gravies to ‘daals’. I recently tried disposing of wet waste in a biodegradable bag I got from an eatery. The gravies leaked out. Dumping wet waste in paper bags will result in a mess of a greater magnitude,” Pratichi Priya, a working professional and mother, said.
Girish Deshpande, managing committee, Anand Park Residents’ Association in Aundh, said the state government has put the cart before the horse this time.
“Banning plastic is good but suitable alternatives should have been provided. Our WhatsApp group is full of members’ comments on how to now dispose of wet waste in the absence of black bin liners. We do not see compostable garbage bags in grocery stores. People are currently trying to find a solution to bagging the garbage but are stumped by the problem,” he said.
Deshpande said some residents are trying to put wet waste in paper bags, but these bags cannot hold this form of waste for more than 24 hours. “It is unhygienic too,” he said.
Other residents TOI spoke to are directly putting wet waste in garbage bins, and then emptying these bins in PMC bins. These residents then have to wash the dustbins daily. Residents said compostable bags are also three times costlier than the non-biodegradable black garbage bags sold earlier.
Chhaya Kamath, another resident of Aundh, is still using the black garbage bags that have been banned. “There is simply no other option. We have to give our waste in bags to waste pickers. How else can we bag the waste? We want SWaCH to help us find alternatives; otherwise the ban will create unnecessary problems for citizens,” she said.
Waste picker Shobha Bansode, who visits close to 200 houses on Prabhat Road to collect trash every day, said as many as a 100 houses from these have now started giving their wet waste wrapped in newspapers. “Some put it in dust bins without bags and then empty the bins into the PMC bins we get. Others are putting wet waste in newspapers or newspapers bags. In almost all the cases where they use paper for wet waste, I am left with torn chunks of paper in my hands and the waste on the floor. Newspapers get soggy and tear, which is unhygienic,” said Bansode.
She said she has to pick all the waste off the floor once again in such cases.
“Citizens have also been asking us about how they are to give out their garbage without suitable bags,” she said.
Harshad Barde, representative of Swach Pune Seva Sahakari Sanstha, cooperative of informal waste-pickers providing primary door step collection service to over 6,00,000 properties across Pune, said, “Since the enforcement of the plastic ban, we feel citizens will throw away their bags in their daily waste. We have appealed to the PMC for exemption from the enforcement for the time being, since they are not creating plastic waste or using plastic bags, they are actually collecting them from waste generators or from the streets and sending them for recycling. Without their work, a lot more plastic would have been in the environment.”
Source : TOI
