Civic team helps manage waste at mega events

Aurangabad: The three-day Maharashtra Trade Fair (MTF), which concluded on Sunday, has set a precedent by contributing to the city-wide solid waste management drive.

The mega event registered around 40,000 visitors at its 250 stalls and attendees for the sessions. Joining hands with the civic response team (CRT), the organisers got 90% of the garbage segregated into dry recyclable and wet organic waste.

Kunal Thakur of the CRT said that three of the team members visited the expo on the first day and sensitised the stall operators about dry and wet waste segregation.

“The awareness campaign caught the attention of other visitors too. We appealed to them to store the waste separately and hand it over to us,” he said.

Not much waste was collected on the second as the stalls were set-up late. However, the team on Monday collected 173kg dry recyclable waste, which included the waste generated in the last two days. The garbage was sent to the Canpack dry waste sorting centre at Central Naka for further processing.

The CRT, with support from Bajaj Auto, collects scrap under the ‘Takatak Bhangarwala’ initiative. This is different from the usual municipal waste collection system. Under this scheme, citizens are urged to store and hand over dry recyclable waste like old newspapers, cartons, cardboards, bottles and shoes.

The aim of the project is to encourage recyclable solutions for rejected material. The ‘Takatak Bhangarwala’ scheme was implemented at the MTF.

The CRT also spoke with the organisers of Maha Agro 2018, which concluded on Monday, following which the contractor expressed his readiness to facilitate segregated waste collection from the stalls at the fair.