MADURAI: Students of Sethu Institute of Technology have designed an application called ‘W-credit (waste to wealth)’ for sanitation workers, using which the workers can award points to residents for waste segregation at source by scanning QR codes put up on the wall of every house.
In association with NGO Nallor Vattam and help of health committee chairman of Madurai corporation council D Jeyaraj , the civic body will be implementing this as a pilot project in 500 houses of Krishnapuram Colony of ward 16.
the students have put up QR code stickers at 150 houses on six streets. They have also trained the sanitation workers on using the application. Jeyaraj said the top three residents who get most points in the next one month will be receive a sari each as gift. If a resident does not segregate the waste, he will be awarded one point. For partial segregation, a resident will get three points and for perfect segregation, five points. If the door is locked, a resident will not get any points.
In January 2022, the students had implemented the project at 150 houses of Thirumangalam municipality. The app was developed by the students with the help of faculty S Siva Ranjani, C Parameswari and S Rathnamala. It bagged first prize of the ministry of housing and urban affairs in the software edition of hackathon held in Jaipur in August 2022.
Parameshwari said, “After studying solid waste management of the city in 2019, we decided to develop a web-based application for waste segregation. Around 600 tonnes of unsegregated waste is being sent to Vellaikal dumping yard every day, and it is a tiring process to segregate it.”
Siva Ranjani said, “The application can track the movement of sanitary workers, their attendance and, at the user’s end, the number of points earned.”
M Abhishek, one of the students who is part of the project, said, “Initially, the residents were hostile to allow us to put up a sticker on their wall. Eventually, they understood the cause of the project and supported us.”
Jeyaraj said that during the second phase, they are planning to try out the app at 500 houses in Indira Nagar Colony, adjacent to Krishnapuram Colony. “Within this week, we have planned to organise a meeting for the students with the corporation commissioner and the city health officer. If the application reaps success, it can be implemented in other wards of the corporation,” he added.
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