BMC to help pick spot for waste management

The BMC will hold a meeting with hotel and restaurant owners in the A-ward next week to designate a common place for wet and dry waste segregation and composting at source. This is in continuance to the civic body's decision in October to make composting of wet waste at source mandatory for bulk generators. According to the BMC, residential building or commercial units that have space of over 20,000 sq metre or generate over 100 kg waste every day, have to carry out composting at their own place.

However, around 230 hotels, restaurants, malls and commercial units from A-ward had cited space scarcity as the major reason for the delay in composting wet waste.

Kiran Dighavkar, assistant commissioner of the ward said, "There is a meeting with hotels and restaurants owners next week where we will look for a common place to compost the wet waste." He added that the recently-concluded four-day exhibition on waste management would be helpful for hotels and restaurants, as they have a number of options for waste management in small places within a time limit.

In A ward, there are a total of 209 bulk generators, who have to start waste composting from October 2, as the civic body will stop picking up their garbage. Dighavkar said that around 60 percent of the bulk generators are hotels and restaurants. In special circumstances, the civic body can also ask premium hotels like Taj Palace to use a part of the parking space for composting with latest technology.

"The intent behind making waste segregation mandatory was to prevent waste from reaching the already exhausted dumping grounds," said Dighavkar.