Thiruvananthapuram: School bin' launch in January

Thiruvananthapuram: The school waste campaign – in which the Corporation will start collecting plastic waste from schools and install kitchen bins on school premises – should have kicked off on December 15.  But the project details are still being fleshed out. “The project should be ready by December 30. Right after the Christmas holidays, on January 3, the project will be launched,” says an official. It is likely that in this academic year, the project will be launched in only three or four prominent schools in Thiruvananthapuram.

The first phase in the main schools may or may not be wrapped up in this academic year. However decisions on these aspects are yet to be taken. The project was announced in November. “The focus of the project will be on spreading awareness on waste management among school children, and through them, their parents. Plastic waste collection and installing kitchen bins are but a few things to encourage schools to take part in the project,” an official says.

There will be tools to gauge how the message spreads to society. For example, tabs will be kept on the number of children who managed to convince their parents to set up kitchen bins or other methods of source-level management. The schools with a maximum percentage of children who convinced their family will be rewarded.   Schools which best support the source-level waste management initiative will be awarded with Green Certificates and cash prizes.

Wards must wait to get ‘Zero Waste’ tag

Fifteen wards in the city were racing towards 100 percent  source-level waste management status by January 1, but they  will have to wait. The corporation will be able to initiate bidding process only by next week. “We hope to invite bids from agencies supplying kitchen bins within a week’s time. The process should be complete by February,” said a corporation official. The corporation now refers to the bins as ‘mini waste plants’ owned by the corporation. Bids will be invited for three-tier-bins.

Earlier the corporation was also thinking of installing steel bins, especially as there were complaints about the bins being bitten into by mice. But the three-tier plastic bins are more cost-effective, and have a larger volume than the steel bins.
The civic body had conducted a survey in the ward to see what kind of waste management system the people were relying on. The corporation officials discouraged the collection of biodegradable waste from homes and told residents that all waste need to be dealt with at the source itself. The corporation will not charge any money for installing the bins.