PCB to wage war against plastic waste

In a bid to adopt eco-friendly measures in its waste disposal methods, the cantonment board will not only introduce separate bins for non-biodegradable waste but also install two bins in almost every street to ensure that the garbage is not thrown on the roads.

The cantonment board hit upon this idea in the face of the sheer magnitude of the task of its employees at the trenching ground at St Patrick’s Town where plastic bags and other non-biodegradable matter continue to pose a major challenge. A visit to the trenching grounds reveals that not only do the plastics keep flying around, but they end up adding to the land fills posing a major task before authorities who find it difficult to even come up with a solution to deal with the non-biodegradable matter.

Cantonment Executive Officer J Sharma told The Indian Express that he planned to write to all shopkeepers not to throw plastic away, but to keep it and hand it over to ragpickers. Concerned by the lack of hygiene near dustbins where garbage is strewn all around especially in areas near hotels, the cantonment board is now examining the possibility of fixing proper timings for all major hotels in the cantonment to throw the garbage into the nearby bin so that this can be picked up by the vans on their daily rounds.

The board, in association with the principal director of Defence Estates, has planned to launch an intensive programme for the formation of mohalla committees in order to educate citizens on the proper use of plastics.