Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has decided to roll out waste segregation at source across the city by October, an official of the civic body said on Sunday.
The segregation at source will mean that all households have to store waste in two buckets - a green one meant for wet waste and a blue one meant for dry waste. The civic body will provide the buckets to the households.
Along roads, too, the KMC will place the two types of waste disposal bins.
For several years, the civic body has been talking about its intention to introduce waste segregation at source but hardly anything was done to implement it.
The KMC official this newspaper spoke to said the current deadline of October seemed realistic as the civic body had started working on procuring bins needed to store the segregated waste and also initiated the process to buy vehicles that will transport the waste from households to compactor stations.
Waste segregation is now practised in only 27 of the 144 wards in the city.
KMC has been directed by the National Green Tribunal to introduce waste segregation at source. The Solid Waste Management Rules 2016, applicable to the entire country, mandates waste segregation at source.
But waste management experts cautioned that segregation of waste into two parts would not mean full compliance with the 2016 rules, which say solid waste should be split into three parts – biodegradable or wet waste, non-biodegradable or dry waste and hazardous waste.
“We will roll out waste segregation at source by October. We floated four tenders over the past two years trying to hire private agencies for collection and transportation of waste. No bid was submitted in response to the first three tenders and only one participated in the fourth,” said an official.
Repeated failures to hire an agency prompted the KMC to tweak its plan and decide to deploy its workforce for the job.
Sources said the KMC has a 14,000-strong workforce engaged in collecting and transporting waste and cleaning streets and sewers.
“We will train our workers in segregation and transporting waste.
The vehicles that collect waste from households every morning do not have compartments. The new vehicles will have two compartments, one for biodegradable and another for non-biodegradable waste,” said the official.
The biodegradable or wet waste, which includes food and kitchen waste, will be compacted to get the fluid squeezed out of it before being taken for bio-compost.
The non-biodegradable waste, which includes plastic, paper and metal, will be sorted at transfer stations or some other points and the individual items sent for recycling.
The waste that cannot be recycled or taken for compost will be sent to the dumping ground.