Waste processing: Awareness drive to promote dumping at recently opened hubs

Following a negligible response from residents to the recently opened waste recycling hubs in the city, the municipal corporation and a non-governmental organisation, which is handling daily operations, are planning to carry out awareness drives in condominiums near the facilities and rope in school students for the project, officials said on Sunday.

“It has been less than two weeks since the two waste recycling hubs opened. We expected the response to be minuscule initially, as it had taken the Samadhaan Hub (opened in 2019) nearly a year of awareness campaigns to gain traction,” said Anjali Khatri, a member of iamgurgaon, the NGO which is operating these facilities.

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) and iamgurgaon NGO launched two waste recycling hubs near Tatvam Villas in Sector 69 and Khushboo Chowk in DLF Phase-1 on July 1. Dry waste, under categories of e-waste, paper, solid plastics, soft plastics, multilayered plastic (MLP), glass and metal, can be dumped at each of the two hubs, where separate bins are installed for each type of waste. Officials at the hubs register residents and direct them towards the appropriate bins.

The two facilities were opened to reduce the amount of daily waste being ferried to the Bandhwari landfill and to provide residents with easier access to such facilities. Around 1800 tonnes of daily waste is dumped at the site from Gurugram and Faridabad. With the Bandhwari waste plant lying defunct since 2013, around 2.5 million tonnes of legacy waste has accumulated at the landfill over time.

Until last month, there was only one recycling facility, at the Samadhaan Hub in Sector 43, which opened in February 2019.

The NGO looks after the day-to-day operations of the three waste recycling hubs with the MCG’s support.

“We have opened the two waste recycling hubs, with the hope of reducing the quantity of waste that is carried to the landfill and also for recycling it for multiple uses. Reduction of waste will also bring down our garbage transportation costs and the saved money can, instead, be allocated for increasing the processing at the landfill,” a senior MCG official privy to the matter said.

Khatri said that the entire awareness process involves bringing about a behavioural change in people, a process that needs continuous effort.

“We plan to visit nearby condominiums or ensure our messages are circulated in the society’s social media platforms so that residents firstly know that such a facility exists and that it can be availed of free of cost. The second part would be to explain to them about the different categories of waste that can be segregated and the advantages of it,” said Khatri.

Khatri said that the NGO, along with the support of the MCG, is also planning to involve Gurugram schools in the project, so that school students can spread awareness locally and ensure dry waste is dumped at the three facilities, as part of their extracurricular activity.

Vaishali Rana Chandra, an environmentalist, said, “While the recycling hubs are a move in the positive direction, it needs to be backed by stringent policies that make it mandatory for recycling of waste for various types of waste. Only then will there be a major impact.”