Bhubaneswar: The efforts to ensure segregation of waste at source has been a dud as the civic body has failed in both maintaining the colour-coded dustbins and in creating awareness among people on the same.

In 2016, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation had started the process to install colour-coded waste bins - green bins for biodegradable waste and blue bins for non-biodegradable waste.

But, in the absence of a robust awareness drive, people couldn't use the bins properly. Besides, lack of regular maintenance made these bins difficult to use now. The civic body had first installed 4000 such colour-coded bins in the city, and the number of bins was later doubled. "We had hired an agency to install the bins and also asked it to maintain the same. But most of the bins remained in a dilapidated condition due to lack of monitoring," admitted a civic official.

Besides, installation of the colour-coded bins in the public places, the civic body has also decided to distribute such bins among city households. The plan was to ask the householders to use the bins and segregate the waste at their level, following which the civic body will collect the segregated waste and dispose it off at the dump yard.

"A layman is not aware of bio-degradable or non-bio-degradable waste. For us, waste is waste and it should be dumped in the waste bins. The officials need to make effort to teach us on how to dump what kind of waste in what kind of bins," said Patrapada resident Bidyadhar Swain.

"We have issued an order to the firm which had installed the colour-coded dustbins in the city. The issue was discussed among councillors and we have decided take action against the firm. We will soon procure new bins and distributed those among the households," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.