Aurangabad: City civic body will collect ‘nirmalaya’ (used flowers), other plastic and non-biodegradable decorations used during Ganesh festival before the immersion.Volunteers comprising of college students, members of NGOs and AMC staff will be deployed at several immersion points on Sunday.Every year, the city witnesses a procession that culminates at 10-12 city wells and immersion points. The idols are decked up with flowers, garlands, plastic or paper decorations, ornaments etc. However, if the idols are immersed with all the decorations, it is very difficult for waste managers to later clean the well.To address this problem, AMC along with the Civic Response Team initiated a waste management system. As part of the plan, volunteers are deployed at various wells on Ganesh Chaturdashi. They coordinate with the mandals to remove all the ornamentation from the idol’s body before immersion.Environmentalist Sanveer Chhabda said around 200 people will collect waste at the wells in Mukundwadi, Shivaji Nagar and Satara Parisar.“There are 150 students from MIT College, Deogiri College and the social works department of Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (Bamu) who will volunteer for the project,” Chhabda said.She added that an average of 4 trucks full of waste is collected every year during the operation. During the process, the volunteers have two sacks. Organic material like ‘nirmalaya’, fruits etc go into one bag, while plastic, paper, foam and any other non-biodegradable material goes into the other sack.Vijay Sapkal from NGO Carpe, said that the organic material will be composted and the recyclable waste will be given to informal waste pickers. Social group Rudra Pratishthan from Satara Parisar will be undertaking the project at Satara well.Over the course of the 11-day Ganesh Utsav, organic waste generated at pandals were collected by AMC staff and sent for composting. This practice helps avoid putting an additional burden on the municipal waste management system.

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