Muzaffarpur municipal corporation trained its employees on how to segregate household waste at the source, on Wednesday, ahead of its new garbage collection system beginning January 23 in 14 wards of the town.

The civic body signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on December 15, last year, to transform the city. According to the MoU, CSE will help the corporation improve the process of waste-collection and treatment. "We've embarked on a mission to keep the city clean, healthy and dirt-free by segregating waste at the source, in households, and its subsequent usage," corporation commissioner Ramesh Chandra Prasad told The Telegraph. "There are 56,000 households under 49 wards listed with the corporation. Households should segregate garbage into wet, dry and domestic hazardous bins, to be colour-coded as green, blue and red respectively from January 23."

The new programme will begin in 14 wards. Households will be supplied bins with a capacity of at least 10kg for waste disposal. Sources said the 49 wards under the corporation generated around 170MT of waste daily. So far the corporation has only invested in collection and transport of waste to a dumping yard in Routaniya village, 15km west of town. The corporation does not treat waste.

Programme manager of CSE Swati Singh Sanyal said civic personnel engaged in collecting the segregated waste have been trained. CSE director Chandra Bhushan said: "Muzaffarpur will soon emerge as a model of cleanliness for other cities."

Neeraj Badshah of Brahmapura and Nishat Parveen of Maripur area hailed the corporation's initiative.