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Local initiative for clean environment

POKHARA, NOV 05 - Are you worried about the dirt of your house? Are you suffering from the fetid garbage thrown at every nook and corner of the city?
But do not worry. About 60 percent of such garbage can be used for making compost and 30 percent can be recycled and reused. Only ten percent of the garbage needs to be thrown in the landfill site.
Residents of Ram Bazaar of Pokhara have presented the example of such technology. The use of such technique helps resolve the problem of the garbage in the cities of the country.
People of ward No 10 and 15 of Pokhara Sub-metropolitan City with the support of Heralo Foundation and the Area Reform Committee, Rambazaar, have used such technology and used the garbage as compost for kitchen garden and flower pot.
GTZ has been providing technical support for the programme. The local people have taken an initiative to create a clean environment in the locality.
In the first phase, the programme will be implemented in 700 houses of the town and it will be implemented in all the 18 wards of the municipality, it is said.
There is no problem of garbage and face the malodorous of the garbage around the house, chairman of Tole Reform Committee, Sammar Bahadur Shrestha, said.
Most of the dirt collected from the kitchen is organic which can be used as fertilizer for kitchen and flower pot, he said.
The dirt collected from the house is divided into three groups. Rice, vegetable, fruits and other foods and other things are kept in a plastic and decomposed.
After three month, dust like fertilizer can be found from that. It is found that about 60 percent of the dirt collected in the house can be used as fertilizer.
"This fertilizer can be sold after filtering it. We can use the garbage in our own home. It is useful," Gita Dhanju, said.
Dry fertilizer is very expensive in Japan, those who have returned from Japan said.
This can be used in different way, she said. "We did not know so faced difficulties of this problem in the past," she added.
Another aspect is those which cannot be rotten like paper, glass, robber, metal, plastic, wood and others can be sold.
Mineral bottle, film roll, plastic carpet, ceramics should be thrown in the landfill.
It is only ten percent of the waste collected in the city.
Municipality has agreed to provide tractor and sports council will provide the area to collect the rubbish, which cannot be decayed. The committee has proposed a plan of Rs. 408,000 for the project.
At the beginning, it was difficult to make habit of collecting the garbage slowly people have started to collect the garbage like this, Chandra Gurung an employee of the campaign said.
A total of 56 persons have taken training with the support of the GTZ for the purpose, she said.
Additional 300 drums are to be added , regional coordinator, Niraj Thapa, said.
The committee has distributed 1,600 calendars to every household and the date has been fixed to collect and throw the garbage.
A total of 50 dustbin are to be kept in various places of the city. "Let’s learn to transform the garbage into income and let’s live in clean and beautiful environment," Niraj Thapa of the committee said.Posted on: 2003-11-04 09:25

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