Competition among civic wards to check garbage generation

The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) is planning to hold a competition for municipal wards across major corporations to keep a check on garbage generation, an official said today.
"The idea is to push the people towards adopting environment friendly measures, and holding a competition at ward level will see a collective effort by people," MPCB member secretary Dr P Anbalagan told PTI.
"The competition is based on 'three R' concept, that stands for reduce, recycle and re-use. It means reduce garbage generation, recycle the generated garbage and reuse after some recycling," he said.
"The details of the competition will be announced in January. All the municipal wards in Mumbai metropolitan region as well as other major corporations in the state will participate in the competition," he said.

"Environmental activists, MPCB officials and social workers will train people to adopt eco-friendly measures. This will also lead to reducing the amount of garbage generation in every ward followed by recycling the garbage," he said.
The ultimate goal is to convert some wards as zero garbage wards in the state. Once we get success, other wards as well as local governing bodies will also replicate it, Anbalagan said.
"In Mumbai metropolitan region, MPCB has decided to communicate about the competition with people by attaching the information to every telephone bill issued by Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. There are some 18 lakh customers who will get an attachment of ward level competition in the next month's bill. We will be able to cover maximum population directly through the measure," he said.

"As MTNL does not have presence in other parts of the state, we have not yet finalised our plan on how to reach to maximum people. We will find some way out, apart from conventional ways of media publicity and holding events," he said.