Ambikapur: On the occasion of 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the countrymen to conserve the environment and called for a revolution in the country's approach towards plastic waste.
Ambikapur- Second story of Garbage cafe While people are just starting to take steps into the direction, Ambikapur Municipal Corporation had started putting efforts into saving the environment back in 2014 with its door-to-door garbage collection scheme. Its solid waste management is emerging as a model for other states.
AMC segregates every part of the collected waste into categories and all of it is sold to be reused through the medium of vendors.
The coloured polythenes are sold to cement factories while the transparent polythenes are manufactured into plastic granules and sold for different works.
While AMC's initiative is proving to be fruitful for the environment, it is also creating employment opportunities for women.
In another unique move, the Corporation has set up the country's first 'Garbage Cafe' in the city. Launched on October 9, the cafe stands for a barter system that is both charitable and responsible.
The garbage cafe provides free food to about anyone who brings in a kilogram of plastic waste. While the cafe witnesses arrival of 9-10 kg of plastic waste daily, the maximum quantity ever witnessed is 21 kg on a single day. The plastic from here is then taken to Sanitary Park's recycling centre. The city corporation plans to use the collected plastic waste to construct roads.
However, the awareness talks about banning single-use plastic surround the country, there have not been any concrete enacted laws for the same.
As such, AMC emerges as a model for all. If all the cities set up such units in their vicinity, India would get rid of nearly half the plastic that is dumped into bins every day.-
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