City is set to become cleaner

Advanced solid waste management system from today

From Sunday, multi-utility vehicles modified as a mini tipper such as this one,will collect waste from households and transfer garbage to compactors(modified trucks) which will then transport it to the landfill site at Vamanjoor

The sight of fully-loaded lorries carrying Mangaluru’s garbage without proper protection and plastic bags flying from these trucks or loose garbage falling onto the roads will be a thing of the past from Sunday.

As a new system of solid waste management kicks in, the obnoxious sight of the lorries that spread foul smell is set to pass into history. The authorities concerned said that this would lead to a cleaner Mangaluru.

Under the new advanced system, a private agency, Antony Waste Handling Pvt. Ltd., has deployed specially designed vehicles that will ensure that waste is transported in a totally different way.

Small tippers will dump waste into the bigger modified lorries — called compactors — that will swallow the garbage and compact it in the vast space in a fully-covered body. Each compactor will carry about 10 tonnes of garbage. As many as 16 compactors and 55 tippers have been deployed.

No payment

Another advantage for the consumer is that under the new system, they need not pay Rs. 30 that they were asked to pay to personnel who used to pick up garbage from households, Mangaluru City Corporation sources told The Hindu .

Under the new arrangement, wet waste will be collected every day and dry waste on Wednesdays from households.

About two lakh pamphlets educating people about this will be distributed to citizens, the sources added. Banners would be put up at strategic locations. Though there was a window of seven months to achieve it, efforts would be made to introduce segregated collection from day one.

As of now, the new contractor, who will be paid on the basis of quantity of garbage he takes to the dumping yard at Vamanjoor, has covered about 70 per cent of the area and the firm would be asked to cover the whole city with additional staff and vehicles, if necessary, the sources added.

The contractor, who has appointed 700 persons for the job, will be paid on the basis of quantity of waste dumped at the landfill site at Vamanjoor at a rate of Rs. 3,201 per tonne for waste collected from areas in the north (Surathkal to Mannagudda) and Rs. 2,051 in the South (Derebail to Jeppinamogaru).