Now, foreign solutions for Deonar dump yard
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has received suggestions to shut the Deonar dumping ground yet again, this time from an international organisation working in the field of environment, 3M. The suggestions came at an event organised by the BMC's M (East) ward under the supervision of Assistant Commissioner Kiran Dighavkar and in collaboration with Member of Parliament Sachin Tendulkar and NGO Apnalay, on Friday. At the event, 3M presented a slew of measures to Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta for systematic solid waste management (SWM) in Mumbai.
Among other suggestions made by 3M, the BMC has been asked to permanently allow rag-pickers in the dumping ground. According to 3M, these workers are waste processors and must be looked upon as an asset, a civic official said.
3M has also suggested that the BMC should introduce a more stringent policy for managing waste segregation. It has suggested color coding garbage collection vehicles, for better waste segregation awareness among citizens. This will help citizens remember that one vehicle will collect only one type of waste, thus creating the attitude of waste segregation.
A team of four people, three of whom were engineers, researched about Deonar dump for a month, before drawing their conclusions and presenting them to the municipal commissioner. This team spoke to all stakeholders in the issue, including rag-pickers, local residents, ward officials, corporators and nongovernmental organizations contributing to the issue.
They also conducted interviews with experts from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), who have presented solutions to the SWM problem so far.
Among other methods for systematic waste disposal, 3M also suggested scientific waste processing and household level waste segregation.
In response to the presentation that lasted for about 35 minutes, Mehta agreed to study the proposal and include some of the suggestions in the measures the civic body is already taking for SWM.
Mehta also proposed that Sachin Tendulkar can help the civic body create awareness about the crisis in garbage management that the city is facing presently, to which Tendulkar responded positively.