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| Sunday, 13 June 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Oh! What rubbish by Lakmal Welabada Suburbia was transported into a junkyard of sorts last week when the Colombo Municipality, in one of its rare magnanimous gestures offered to collect all rubbish barring kitchen refuse with no question, and more specifically, no 'payments' asked.
The programme was introduced as part of the environment friendly programme on World Environment Day on Saturday (June 5). Solid waste like gardening chippings, soil and other debris of house demolitions piled up in the back or front yards for weeks and months, were seen on the road sides for the CMC tractors to collect. "Ten to twenty per cent of the solid waste was plastics and polythene," says Mr. Lalith Wickremaratne, Director/Engineering - Solid Waste Management of the CMC. "In addition, tyres, wooden planks, tins and different parts of vehicles were also among the refuse. One hundred Municipality tractors plied the streets of Colombo, on Saturday collecting around 400 tons of junk. "Nearly 40 to 50 tons of solid refuse was collected by 20 tractors each day throughout the week," Wickremaratne points out. On normal days the citizens of Colombo have to pay Rs,500 to the CMC to get rid of a tractor load of solid waste. "As this programme provided free facilities in every way, Colombo citizens responded to us very enthusiastically," he says. The CMC informed the public about the City Cleaning Programme by distributing a leaflet and publishing press notices in almost every newspaper. "We asked them to respond to us by telephoning or through the E-mail before June 4 giving the details of the junk we had to remove from their places. We got 268 requests by this day. And nearly 70 more requests were received while the programme was on," says Mr. Wickremaratne. According to Mr. Wickremaratne the CMC hopes to continue with the City Cleaning Programme every six months so that the citizens could get rid of the 'unwanted solid waste' their houses free of charge. "And it will indirectly help to have a clean and healthy environment to live in," he says. Apart from the City Cleaning Programme the CMC is also involved in a number of solid waste recycling projects. "Mainly this part of the programme is handled by a few private organisations who have joined us on this endeavour on tender basis," he says, explaining that under this project, solid junk thrown away in the whole of Pettah area is collected and distributed to recycling centres. Three Polysac bags are also given to each resident in a number of areas in Colombo to collect solid waste. The three bags are are for glass/metal, paper and polythene separately. Private organisations collect solid waste from each house once a month and direct them to the recycling centres. The CMC provides tractors to collect waste. The project has so far covered 6000 houses in Colombo West, 3000 houses in Thimbirigasyaya area and 5000 houses in Kirullapone - Pamankada. Each area is handled by different private organisations. The CMC hopes to launch the next project in the Borella area. "As this project helps us remove solid waste, it reduces the normal tonnage the CMC has to dispose. In 2002 we collected nearly 780 tons of garbage per day. But today it has been reduced to 600 tons. And we have been saving Rs. 1 million per month, when compared to 2002. This money is spent on new projects in garbage recycling," explains the Director Solid Waste Management. He also says that the food waste they collect is sold (a ton for Rs. 590) to a private composts plant at Sedawatta to make composts fertilizer. Sevanatha Urban Resource Centre is one of the private organisations that deals with the CMC in recycling garbage. H.M.U. Chularatne, Executive Director of Sevanatha describes ther organisation as a self-funded housing and community development organisation. "The main theme of our project launched with the CMC is 'to reduce environmental destruction'. We deal with 5000 houses in the Kirullapone - Pamankada area. In addition to giving three Polysac bags to these houses to collect glass/metal, paper and plastic/polythene, we have provided each of them with galvanised bins with concrete base to make composts fertilizer. Residents can dump kitchen waste and other food waste into this bin and use the composts for their flower beds and other gardening work," says Mr.Chularatne. "We promote two types of bins. The short, two-ring bin that costs about Rs. 1200 and the tall, three-ring bin that costs about Rs. 1500. We spend around Rs. 800-1000 on a bin, so we are giving it away almost at cost. So far we have distributed nearly 12,000 of such composts making bins in Colombo, Negombo, Kandy, Galle, Ratnapura and Matale area with the help of local authorities. In some areas the local authorities bear half of the cost of the bin and let the house owners pay the rest. Many local authorities have willingly joined us and encourage the public to get used to this method as 80 percent of the garbage thrown away from houses are kitchen waste. When recycled, the garbage in one's own garden provides composts free of charge while helping to reduce waste transportation and lessening environmental pollution," he says. |
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| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
And the denizens of subarbia eager to be rid of building discards,
broken and beyond repair furniture, old and warn out tyres, garden
chippings and just about anything that didn't have a price tag and could
be termed junk, gleefully accepted the offer, piling up the discards for
the Municipality workers to cart away. The junk collection was part of the
City Cleaning Programme and according to Colombo Municipality officials,
it was a tremendous success.
