Tiruvottiyur strives for zero-waste wards

S Nathiya, a 30-year-old ‘Sanitation Animator’, has been going door-to-door for the last six months, talking to residents about the city’s monumental garbage problem and how every single person can make a difference – by source segregation.

“When I first started going door-to-door to create awareness, out of 20 homes, one would be ready to give the idea a shot. I was worried if I would be successful in changing people’s perceptions. But once I started explaining how easy it was to source segregate, more people started thinking about it. Now, after all these months, in Jyothi Nagar, 60 households are already started segregating their wastes,” said the parttime sanitation facilitator. 

Like Nathiya, there are seven other sanitation animators, creating awareness in eight localities – Jyoti Nagar, Mullai Nagar, Kamaraj Nagar, Mahalakshmi Nagar, Kannila Layout, Bharathi Nagar and Brindavan Nagar. 

Mangalam Balasubramanian, Founder and Managing Trustee of Exnora Green Pammal, said around 2,000 households have started source segregation in Tiruvottiyur. “This is a Public-private partnership (PPP) model and an MoU (memorandum of understanding) was signed between the Greater Chennai Corporation and ITC group which is funding the project. We are the technical partners. The focus is to not only get people to source segregate but also begin home composting, using the manure for kitchen and terrace garden. Whoever doesn’t have the facility to compost the organic waste at home, it will go to the Corporation compost yard,” she said. 

For this, a committee has been formed for each street, with four residents supervising the process. “The sanitation animators are the interface between the community and management. We have also involved self-help groups, who will buy the compost and market it, and deal with the recyclable materials. Our aim is that only 15% of the inert (materials that cannot be recycled) should go to the landfill. We want to make this a zero-waste ward over the next six months,” added Mangalam.