ITC ties up with Pune city body for plastic waste management

Diversified conglomerate ITC Ltd on Wednesday said it has joined hands with the Pune Municipal Corporation and a waste-pickers cooperative to collect and process multi-layered plastic (MLP) waste in the city.

The company has launched the model for sustainable management of MLP waste on an end-to-end basis in partnership with SWaCH and the Pune civic body, an official release said.

In the first phase, ITC-SWaCH-PMC will operate one processing facility with a capacity to manage 200 metric tonne of MLP waste per month, providing an opportunity to 3,500 such collectors, it said.

These collectors will gather dry and wet waste separately every day, covering 8.1 lakh properties across the city, ITC said.

"With the ITC-SWaCH-PMC partnership... We are taking yet another step in building a model which goes beyond segregation of solid waste to addressing one of the acute challenges of managing and recycling of the mounting multi- layered-plastic waste," ITC Projects Head (EHS and Quality Assurance) Chitranjan Dar said.

The company, along with its partners, are looking forward to expanding the programme to cover the entire Pune city in the near future, he said.

ITC's waste management initiative was first launched in 2007 in Bengaluru and has expanded to 12 other cities, creating sustainable livelihood for over 14,500 waste collectors and more than 80 social entrepreneurs, the release said.