GB Nagar: Residents go green to make city garbage free
NOIDA: Residents of Gautam Budh Nagar are on a mission to ensure a cleaner and greener district. On October 1, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched phase 2 of the Swachh Bharat Mission with the aim to make all cities garbage free, here’s a glimpse into what residents here are doing to achieve the dream.
For the past three months, at least 100 households in Noida’s Arun Vihar have been recycling their dry waste and about 30 of them are composting their wet waste, essentially moving closer to zero-waste homes. The initiative was started by Arun Vihar residents’ group ‘Saaph’ (Sustainable Alternatives and Awareness against Plastics and Household waste). “We have registered with an organisation that recycles dry waste and takes it from us every fortnight,” said Radhika Gulati, a resident of Arun Vihar and a member of Saaph.
“Not all households registered for dry waste are composting wet waste at home as of now. We continue to create awareness and encourage people to create home compost using wet waste,” said Supriya Sardana, another resident of Arun Vihar and a member of Saaph who also runs a ‘crockery bank’ to cut the use of disposable plastic utensils.
Shail Mathur, a resident of Sector 55, has also been advocating against the use of single-use plastic for the past six years.
Mathur has created a residents group ‘TREE’ (taking responsibility for earth and environment) that works on distributing cloth bags.
“Under TREE, we have been mobilising local children to confiscate any polythene or polybags found at any shop or vendor in the sector and provide them with free cloth bags prepared by us. With our continuous efforts, the weekly market in Sector 55 has become plasticfree now,” said Mathur.
In March this year, the Noida Authority recognised Sector 55-56 market as ‘plastic-free’. “We hope such initiatives of residents continue to make our city cleaner. Moreover, we always encourage environment-friendly activities,” said Ritu Maheshwari, CEO of Noida Authority.