Sector V branch of the State Bank of India. (Saradindu Chaudhury)
To tackle the ever-increasing volume of waste generated in Sector V, the authorities have decided to purchase three compactor units to shrink the garbage before disposing it.
As reported in the article “Leash for the garbage demon,” published on January 30, Bidhannagar Municipality is also planning to buy three compactors to deal with trash produced in the rest of Salt Lake. And now Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority (NDITA), the administrative body in charge of Sector V, has cleared the purchase
of three compactors in its annual budget. The machines cost Rs 1 crore a piece.
“Sector V generates 20-25 tonnes of waste a day and the volume is growing. Waste pours in from office and residential complexes, restaurants and roadside eateries,” said an NDITA source.
“We have small dustbins around the township but they cannot hold everything from leftover curry to thermocol plates and plastic cups.” Workers of NDITA’s solid waste management department go door-to-door collecting waste but they are grappling to deal with the volume.
So three compactors will now be purchased and installed near Srijan Tech Park in DN Block, near the weigh bridge of AQ Block and near the 44A bus stand close to the CSTC depot. “We already have big, metallic closed-street containers acting as vats around Sector V. Once an adequate amount of trash has piled up inside them, they will be attached to a truck and driven to the nearest compactor,” said executive officer of NDITA, Badrinarayan Kar.
Some hand carts and mini-vans that go door-to-door collecting trash will go straight to the compactors. “With reduced volume of garbage, our trucks will have to make fewer trips to the dumping yard and so we’ll save fuel. And the trips will be odourless too.”
The garbage will then be compressed and transported to the dumping ground in Mollar Bheri behind the Technopolis building.
A civic engineer involved in the garbage disposal department of Bidhannagar Municiplaity explained that a compactor uses about 30 metric tonnes of force to squeeze out water from waste that it is fed with, thereby reducing its volume. “One such machine can take in 14 metric tonnes of waste a day and reduce it to 10 metric tonnes, which is a huge difference in terms of surface area,” he said, asking not to be named.
But he stresses on the need to segregate waste before compressing it. “Sector V generates a lot of construction waste which would damage the compactor. They also cannot dump e-waste into the machine as they have alarming effects on the environment,” said the engineer.
