The concept of segregation of dry waste and wet waste has failed completely. What's more... dry leaves are often set on fire at dhalaos to reduce load!
The overflowing, mixed waste at dhalaos across Dwarka point to yet another civic failure — and a grave one at that. Dry waste and horticulture waste (mainly dry leaves) — sometimes even wet waste — are often thrown in together and workers at these dhalaos are hardly aware to oppose this pointless practise.
One such dhalao can be seen at Sector 3, near the police booth.
Rakesh Sharma, a resident of the area, said, “I don’t see regular pick-up of garbage from this dhalao. Mixed garbage shows the hollow the approach of the municipal corporation — they are doing nothing, but make big claims. Such a shame! They are making us aware about segregation, but they themselves are violating their own norms.”
The concept of segregation of dry waste and wet waste has failed completely, as there is no proper mechanism in place to implement it.
Vinay Bhatia, a resident of Sector 11, complained, “Residents are doing the segregation at home, and societies are keeping the segregated waste separately in the blue and green dustbins provided by the corporation. But the trucks that come to the societies to collect the garbage are dumping them together at the dhalaos.”
There’s more grouse.
From time to time, the dry leaves are set on fire to reduce the work of disposing them. Recently, one such fire was witnessed at the dhalao in Sector 3.
“This is a routine practice — they set the dry leaves on fire to reduce the load at dhalaos. This is such an anti-environment act, perpetrated by the system itself to hide its own failure. They claim they are not doing it, but we are not fools. The SDMC should accept its failure and start working on it,” said Rashmi Shukla, a resident of Sector 5.
Here’s the irony — Dwarka was chosen by the SDMC to set benchmarks in waste management; it was to become a model city — a zero-waste zone.
Pritha Sen, a resident of Sector 12, lamented, “To ensure segregation, blue and green rooms were constructed at dhalaos across Dwarka, but they clearly haven’t served the purpose. Look at the dhalaos along the drain in Sectors 5, 11 and 12 — mixed garbage is the norm and not exception.”
No SDMC official was ready to say anything concrete on the matter. Requesting anonymity, one of the officials said, “There’s a plan to provide one big composter in each ward so that the wet waste can be converted into compost. But, at this point, we still have no real solution for dry leaves at the dhalaos. The whole system needs an overhaul, and a relook.”
