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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Buoyed by the revenue generated from the collection and disposal of dry and liquid waste, the corporation is taking baby steps in implementing recommended models of circular economy in waste management. The budget for 2023-24, which was presented on Saturday, has introduced a brief concept plan to implement a circular economy in waste management in the city.
Circular economy takes a shift from linear economy of produce, consumption and disposal and instead, promotes reusing, recycling and refurbishing, so that it keeps materials in circulation for a long time and eliminates generation of waste.
City corporation secretary Binu Francis said over the past few years, the civic body has put in place a system which effectively makes transition to a circular economy an easy process.
“We started off with dry waste collection, recycling, then systematic collection of septage and now we have got Haritha Karma Sena workers covering almost all the city wards for dry waste collection. We now want to take it to the next level by establishing a sustainable model of circular economy,” said Binu Francis.
The civic body has incorporated ideas pitched during the collectives and seminars organized at the national level.The civic body now runs two resource recovery facilities, 56 material collection facilities, and 22 mini-material collection facilities in the city. The budget proposes setting up mini MCFs in all the wards in the coming financial year.
“We started off with dry waste collection, recycling, then systematic collection of septage and now we have got Haritha Karma Sena workers covering almost all the city wards for dry waste collection. We now want to take it to the next level by establishing a sustainable model of circular economy,” said Binu Francis.
The civic body has incorporated ideas pitched during the collectives and seminars organized at the national level.The civic body now runs two resource recovery facilities, 56 material collection facilities, and 22 mini-material collection facilities in the city. The budget proposes setting up mini MCFs in all the wards in the coming financial year.
The corporation, which could successfully broaden the network of dry waste collection in city wards, now plans to cover 80% of households under this scheme in 2023-24. This way, corporation can increase daily dry waste collection to 6,000 kg and can result in monthly user fee collection of Rs 1.25 crore.
As per a report prepared by the ministry of housing and urban affairs, the circular economy can be implemented in five business models for dry waste.
These models are the circular supply chain model where fully recyclable materials replace single lifecycle inputs, recovery and recycling models, where useful resources are recovered out of disposed products, product life extension model in which working lifecycle of products is extended through repairing, upgrading and reselling, sharing platform model which enables increased utilization rate of products and product as a service model, which envisages offering product access and retaining ownership to internalize benefit of circular resource productivity.
The online septage collection model introduced by the city corporation has already turned out to be a success. Two years into the launch of the scheme, the corporation`s revenue had crossed Rs 1 crore. Officials said the civic body still has a long way to go. One of the key aspects of this model is to ensure the lifecycle of a product and for that repair mechanism to be strengthened and we need more stakeholders to pitch in, said an official.
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