NMMC provides 25 vehicles, 300 volunteers to collect floral waste

The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation has provide 25 vehicles and over 300 people for collecting floral wastes from the Ganpati immersion sites in the city.

The civic officials have also put huge pots (nirmalya kalash) for collecting the flowers, garlands and the fruits used in the rituals from the sites. Banners have been placed asking devotees to put the floral wastes in those pots instead of throwing them into the water.

This waste will not be mixed with general garbage collected from the city and will be treated separately to the form of biofertilizers, the officials said.

Tushar Pawar, deputy municipal commissioner, said, “There are around 25 immersion sites and we have provided one vehicles at every site. Three people have been deployed with one vehicle who will carry the waste from the immersion sites to the pits for composting.”

“We have kept people for collecting waste from the sites. So over 300 people have been deployed for this job across the city,” he added.

Pawar said special attention has been paid to clean the sites after the immersion.

“We cleaned the peripheral areas of the ponds as soon as the A police band plays quietly to spread noise pollution message Shiv Sambhu Mitra Mandal Ganpati Pandal. one-and-a-half day immersion was over,” he said.

“We have made separate pits for treating floral wastes at different places of the city. Our vehicles will also collect the floral waste from pandals and on the roads. They will be treated in the new pits. Thus there is no chance of mixing these wastes with other garbage,” another senior official from the solid waste management of NMMC said.

“The number of devotees and idols may increase on the seventh and tenth day of the festival. We will see the scenario and if need be will provide more vehicles and more people for collecting the waste on those days,” the officer said.

Residents have welcomed the move.

“The flowers, garlands, fruits and other materials used in the rituals and thought to be sacred and people normally don’t want those to be treated with other garbage. So by deciding to treat those separately NMMC has done a great job,” said Shalini Mistry, a resident of Kopar Khairane.

“The NMMC should clean the roads and the ponds as soon as the festival is over. At several places the pond are left unattended after the festival. It pollutes the water and harms marine life,” said Gulshan Chetry, a resident of Belapur.