It pays to manage waste, find 9 south Mumbai societies

MUMBAI: If people don't turn up their noses, garbage may not be all that smelly. Starting this month, nine housing societies in south Mumbai’s D Ward will qualify for a 10% property tax rebate - 5% for properly segregating their wet and dry waste and 5% for composting the wet garbage on their premises.

The incentive is part of the ongoing initiatives to send zero garbage to Mumbai’s overflowing landfills which are hazardous and combustible. Over the last two years, most societies and bulk waste generators like restaurants have changed their approach to garbage and realised that they must now share the onus of waste disposal with the civic body, in keeping with a 2016 Central government notification that requires people to segregate waste at source.

*We are finding that many societies already doing a great job of taking care of their wet waste on their premises, including Godrej Baug, Infinity Towers, Hill Park and Navrang.” says Rajendra Jagtap, who oversees solid waste management in D ward. “Bulk generators like Malabar Hill Club and Willingdon Sports Club also take care of their own kitchen waste. Even Mahalaxmi and Babulnath Temple and ISKCON have installed machines that compost their floral waste."

For the first time, a private company has been appointed to take charge of all dry garbage, starting in D Ward because the NGO model has not been consistent. From March 1, Dalmia Polypro, an upcycler that converts plastic waste into film, yarn, furniture and other products, will handle the entire chain of collecting, segregating, recycling and transporting dry waste. It will start first with Nepean Sea Road, Walkeshwar Road and Malabar Hill and gradually move to other areas in the ward. The company has been allotted space in Worli for its upcycling stork.

Ragpickers help in waste segregation, to be trained in cleaning up dry plastic

Dalmia Polypro, a plastic upcycling firm, has been given space at Khadye Marg, opposite Mahalaxmi Race Course, where its machines now pack the plastic into tight bales and also neatly divide it into the various grades which can then be sent to be regurgitated into iis new avatars.

“PET bottles yield fibre yarn which is used to make clothes, blankets and shoes: fast food packaging becomes fuel or can be used to make agricultural pipes, the hub for which is in Malegaon," says Shashikant Joshi of Dalmia Polypro. "The multilayer plastic used in packaging has no real value, which is why you can see it lying everywhere, on streets or clogging drains. Now we will handle it and ensure that it is transported to the cement factories where it is used in place of carbon fuel."

The vast informal recycling army of ragpickers are being given identity cards and uniforms and continue to participate in the segregation process. There are around 85 ragpickers across D ward, says Jagtap. They will also be trained to clean up the dry plastic that still contain bits of wet food or milk. If this pilot project works, it will be replicated across the city. As for wet waste, all housing societies, restaurants and other generators will eventually have to handle this at source, either by composting on the premises or handing the job over to a contractor.

So for, D ward office has received 14 applications for the rebate. "We have found 9 to be in order and the rest are still being scrutinised," says Jagtap. The rebate will be effective from April onwards, in the general assessment category of property tax.

Waste management systems in the city has long followed a haphazard system where wet and dry waste collectively found its way into the overflowing landfills in Deonar and Kanjurmarg, leading to periodic combustion caused by compressed gasses. Even nfter some housing societies started following segregating practices, there has been no proper audit of whether the wet