Aurangabad: The civic administration, which had fervently announced in March that it would collect dry garbage from households twice a week to ensure segregation of waste at source, has failed to effectively implement its key initiative.The apathy of the middle and lower rung of civic authorities has resulted in the fiasco which, if it was effectively implemented, could have alleviated the garbage crisis in the city.Realizing that citizens hardly segregate wet and dry waste, then civic chief D M Mugalikar had announced that Aurangabad Municipal Corporation will carry out door-do-door collection of dry and solid waste on selective days.As per the announcement, dry garbage was to be collected from every household twice a week (Tuesday and Friday) while wet waste was to be collected everyday. The move was strongly advocated by Mugalikar not segregating waste at source was believed to be one of the root causes of the compounding garbage crisis in the city.Gopal Kulkarni, a senior citizen from Mayur Nagar area from N-11, said she had never come across the practice of collecting dry waste on selective days in the past six months. “In our area, residents hand over both dry and waste waste to the collection van every day. Both AMC’s ground staffers and citizens are ignorant of segregating waste at source. Had the initiative been implemented properly, even citizens would have got into the habit of segregating wet and dry waste,” said Kulkatni.Effective segregation of garbage at source facilitates category-wise collection and subsequent processing of waste. While wet garbage can be effectively disposed of in pits and gardens at ward level by composting, other processing methods can be used for treating non-organic waste. Around 115 wards falling under the jurisdiction of the municpal corporation generate around 500 metric tonne of garbage everyday.Additional municipal commissioner Shrikrishna Bhalsingh said that collection of dry waste on selective days could not be implemented at a blanket level across the city.“It was a good measure but has been limited to some wards only. The civic body has been working on a war-footing to improve processing facilities. Once the necessary infrastructure and facilities comes up, we will ensure that the practice of collecting dry waste on Tuesdays and Fridays is implemented in letter and spirit across the municipal limits,” he said.During the announcement in March, the civic body had made it clear that housing societies and other establishments generating more than 100 kg of waste per day must come up with their own garbage disposal system. However, this initiative too has not been able to fetch the desired response.Solid Waste Management Rules: As per the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, the segregation of waste at source has been mandated to channelize the waste to wealth by recovery, reuse and recycle.Responsibilities of generators (citizens and others) have been introduced to segregate waste into three streams—wet (biodegradable), dry (plastic, paper, metal, wood, etc.) and domestic hazardous wastes (diapers, napkins, empty containers of cleaning agents, mosquito repellents, etc.) and handover the segregated wastes to authorized rag-pickers or waste collectors or local bodies.All hotels and restaurants should segregate biodegradable waste and set up a system of collection or follow the system of collection set up by local body to ensure that food waste is utilized for composting / biomethanation

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