The Times of India             12.02.2014

'Litter-free Beach Road' campaign tobe launched

VISAKHAPATNAM: Vuda along with the district administration, GVMC and the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach) is taking up a beach cleaning campaign to make Beach Road litter-free.

Increasing the number of dustbins, signs declaring that the place is a litter-free zone, educating the vendors to prevent people from littering the place, making public announcements about keeping the beach litter-free using a pre-recorded addressing system, were among the measures discussed at a meeting chaired on Tuesday by Vuda vice-chairman N Yuvaraj.

Further, morning and evening walkers would also be asked to volunteer to advise the public to keep the place clean. Corporates and NGOs would be asked to provide more drinking water coolers along the stretch to minimise the use of plastic bottles and water packets, informed Intach member Sohan Hatangadi, who also focused on keeping the beaches plastic-free.

Intach convener PV Prasad and architects Narasimha Rao and Shabnam Patel were among those present.

The Hindu            05.02.2014

All city school to have biogas plants soon

All the city schools will begin a new chapter in decentralised waste management during the next academic year by installing biogas units on the campuses.

The Kochi Corporation and Suchitwa Mission have joined hands in imparting the practical lessons in waste processing in city schools.

Earlier, the local body had obtained the clearance from the State authorities for installing the plants in government schools within the city limits. It had also pushed the case of aided and unaided schools in the city as the second phase of the programme.

The other day, the State government issued administrative sanction for installing biogas plants in 54 schools in the city limits including government, aided and un-aided institutions, said T.K. Ashraf, Chairman of the Health Standing Committee of the Kochi Corporation.

The projects will be implemented with the financial support of the Suchitwa Mission.

The agenda of the Corporation Council permitting an agency to set up the units in government schools was passed during the last meeting. Though only one agency had responded to the bid for setting up the units, it was sanctioned at the meeting as the Mayor declared all the agenda passed. The Mayor resorted to passing all the agenda in one stroke as a section of the Congress councillors and LDF members staged a walk out.

The construction of the plants will begin in March when schools will close for the summer vacation. The units would be ready before June, when the educational institutions will reopen. Students will be trained in managing bio-degradable waste at their educational institutions. It would be mostly food waste that would be going into the units. The capacity of the biogas units that are to be provided to the institutions will be proportional to the student strength, he said.

The local body had earlier launched Bhoomika, an awareness programmes on waste management for school students. The students were encouraged to collect plastic refuse from their homes and store them at their schools, which would be picked up by the local body. The students were also provided incentives for the collection.

The local body had also decided to provide nine biogas units and 1,500 pipe compost units to residents of every division as part of the decentralised waste management system. The beneficiaries of these projects were selected by ward meetings. These units will be provided subsidies too, Mr. Ashraf said.