Mumbai : India’s richest civic body has now come up with a plan to make money out of trash. In a first, the BMC plans to generate revenue by auctioning off rights to solid waste generated from the city from March 2016 onwards, while the plans to have 100 per cent segregation at the source will be executed from March 2015 itself.
Considering the city’s growing population, the amount of waste generated from households every day and shortage of staff, the BMC recently announced stringent measures for segregation of waste into wet and dry categories. Notices were served to 42 per cent of the 34.71 lakh housing societies surveyed as well as to 53 per cent of commercial establishments under section 368 of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act which mandates people to keep separate bins for wet and dry waste. Societies now have to act within seven days of receiving the notice. If they fail to comply, they can be prosecuted under section 477 of MMC Act for fines upto Rs 10,000.
However, with Mumbai experiencing an ever-increasing population, the civic body’s 32 waste segregation centres are overburdened with work. “The BMC is now considering roping in rag-pickers from registered scrap-merchants’ organisation. If this experiment is successful, the BMC will then auction rights to its solid waste to the highest bidder from March 2016 onwards, which will result in revenue for the civic body,” said a proposal which will be presented before the standing committee for approval on Wednesday.
“Yes, we will auction rights to the city’s solid waste to licensed agencies who will then be involved in the collection, sorting and recycling processes. No other civic body has done this and even the BMC is considering this for the first time. But things are only in the proposal stage right now,” confirmed deputy municipal commissioner Prakash Patil who is in-charge of solid waste management.
However, Patil could not say how much revenue the BMC will gain from the 900 metric tonne dry waste it collects every day.
Tanvi Deshpande
