The benifits of a bin free city

Panaji is possibly the only bin free city in the country. And while few may point fingers at the flaws in the system and those with a voice will dedicate large chunks of the print space to gain reader attention but heres the story of why Panaji does not have community bins.

The Trash Wave

Even as the capital city of Goa, Panaji was a tiny town of 40,000 inhabitants with most of its inhabitants living in independent Houses having large open spaces. As Goa became more popular Panaji grew many fold and houses gave way to apartment buildings. The Area where 6 to 10 individuals lived now housed 40 to 50 individuals in apartment blocks. This has immensely increased the volume of waste generated.

The new trend of consumerism has also caused us to replace local produce and home made goodies with shiny readymade products that we pick of the supermarket shelves.

Buying high quality products, which were lasting, and the concept of use – repair - reuse for clothes and footwear is replaced with low quality products that are to be used and thrown away

These trends have added to the large volumes of garbage generated

The City generates 30 tonnes of waste daily and when this waste is mixed together the only method for disposal is by burying it in large craters called land fills.

The Problem in 2003

Panaji is a narrow strip of land that is surrounded by water, the geography of the land has not provided it with space for a land fill. Once upon a time Panaji dumped its waste in a neighboring village of Curca. But the villagers opposed and stopped this practice. Today every village and town has the attitude of “not in my back yard” so where dose Panaji send 30 tonnes of waste daily.

An Innovative Solution

The City recognized this problem and made a change way back in 2003. The city went ‘Bin Free’ which means community bins were removed and instead the city offered the citizens door-to-door collection of waste. But the condition was that the waste be segregated into 2 factions wet and dry.

Over the years the city has gone a step forward and asked housing colonies and gated communities to segregate the dry waste into 4 factions of Paper, Plastic, Glass & Metal and Non Recyclables. Besides this the Medical Waste is collected separate, as are batteries and bulbs and tube lights. The wet waste from housing colonies is composted on premise in compost pits designed for the purpose while commercial and hotel wet waste is composted at a central facility.

Most of the dry waste is then bailed and sent to recyclers, the non recyclable components are bailed and sent to cement factories to be used in their furnaces as ‘Refuse Derived Fuel’ other innovative ideas adopted by the city in MSW management are the use of a Styropactor to compress the thermacole packaging into bricks which are then sent to a recycler. Branches and garden waste is put through a chipper and the mulch is used in the composting process.

The city organizes awareness programs to interact with the citizens to educate them on the importance of segregation, many of these programs are conducted for school students who as we know are the future and will also take the message back to their parents and elders.

Looking Ahead

Panaji has set a goal of achieving over 96% recycling so that not more that 4% of inert waste needs to be land filled.

Challenges

While nearly 90% of the city segregates our waste there are still a few black spots (piles of rubbish heaps) that pop up in and around the city. We aim to identify the root cause of these black spots

We need to collect specific data that when analyzed will direct the remedial actions that need to be taken if we are to achieve our Goal.

We need to better design our communication that will allow us to make our awareness programs more effective.

There is a need to identify the cost to the city for providing this service to its citizens

A Case study will help us apply to National & International funding agencies for grants and loans.

The City administration has a limited bandwidth and cannot take up these issues. We are therefore looking for institutions to partner us in making Panaji the best city in the world when it come to managing our waste.