Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) has decided to set up three electric compost machines at at many crowded places in the capital by month-end, this welcome move being one of the few instances where the civic body is seen to be keeping the city’s overall wellness in mind.

RMC, which has spent Rs 14 lakh to purchase three compost machines, has also chosen Madhukam vegetable market, Daily Market and Birsa Munda bus stand for them. Further, it is also mulling if a compost machines can be set up at Pahari Mandir to transform temple wastes into manure.

Outlining the immediate plan, RMC health officer Kiran Kumari said, “Earlier, we had placed iron containers at these places to convert organic waste into organic manure. But now, we have decided to set up electric compost machines which segregate organic waste in three steps and automatically convert trash into manure, which will then be used to fertilise parks or will be given to RMC self-help groups to sell them and generate revenue.”

The RMC was also surveying the total bio waste produced from temples and in principle had decided to install this machine at Pahari Mandir.

“It has been seen that bio waste of temples in the form of puja materials such as flowers, leaves and the like are generated in huge quantity and every single day,” Kumari said.

“It’s a problem for the temple management too. They don’t want to hand over these items to our garbage collection vans owning to religious sentiments. We have decided to dedicate an exclusive garbage collection van to collect such items from temples that we plan to convert as compost at our proposed unit at Pahari Mandir. This unit will be exclusively for processing organic waste from temples.”

RMC has been facing problems in segregating wet and dry waste during its door-to-door collection drive because hardly any citizen bothers to keep both separate. Out of the 53 wards, RMC manages cleanliness and doorstep garbage collection drives at 20 wards, involving around 400 safai karmacharis in the operation.

Now, RMC has also decided to provide 15-day training to its safai workers about how to segregate wet and dry waste at source. Safai workers will also ask people to keep dry and wet wastes separately.