Imagine a city producing solid waste with almost 300 garbage trolleys carrying around 3,500 metric tonnes daily and 15 to 20 per cent being inorganic waste — Kolkata is slowly marching towards being choked by unsegregated waste disposal. Worse, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s (KMC) pilot project of solid waste management has failed to achieve the results.

According to Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, the solid waste management programme to segregate bio-degradable and non bio-degradable wastes failed to achieve its objective because of lack of cooperation from the residents.

He was speaking at the Waste Management Conclave 2009, organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce on Friday.

The civic body had recently initiated a project for segregating household waste into recyclable organic waste and non-recyclable inorganic waste. People employed by contractors were supposed to visit households to collect inorganic waste and KMC staff to collect organic waste.

“The problem with our city is that solid waste was not properly segregated. The segregation scheme failed to take off due to the lack of acceptance from people,” said Bhattacharya.

Interestingly, the segregation of solid waste has already been carried out effectively in other parts of the state like Chandernagore Municipal Corporation in Hooghly and Cooch Behar, besides in other metro cities like Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.

The Mayor also said rag-pickers while collecting plastic carry bags often scatter garbage near vats.

“We will hold a meeting on August 25 with different municipalties on how to deal with such rag-pickers. Different associations, chambers, plastic federations can come up with valuable suggestions on the issue,” said Biswajit Mukerjee, chief law officer, state environment department.