Ghaziabad municipal corporation opens theme-based ‘waste to wonder’ park

Ghaziabad inaugurates its first "waste to wonder" park, creatively using discarded materials to create instruments, selfie points, and educate on recycling.

Ghaziabad: Discarded tyres, water tanks and geysers, old exhaust fans, dumped soft drink bottles and other scrap material have been creatively used to create various musical instruments, and selfie points at Ghaziabad municipal corporation’s first theme-based “waste to wonder” park in Raj Nagar that was inaugurated on Tuesday.

All the discarded scrap material is carefully crafted into various items like musical instruments, selfie points, and shamiyana and different types of seats by carefully painting and colouring them accordingly, said Ghaziabad municipal commissioner. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

Vikramaditya Malik, the municipal commissioner, during the opening ceremony, said the theme-based park has transformed and enhanced the look of the Sector 14, Raj Nagar Park and at least one such park has been proposed in four other corporation zones in the city.

“All the discarded scrap material is carefully crafted into various items like musical instruments, selfie points, and shamiyana and different types of seats by carefully painting and colouring them accordingly. It shows that waste can be easily recycled into meaningful items, and other facilities like parks, roundabouts, major crossings can easily be beautified,” said Malik.

Officials said that they roped in a non-governmental organisation to transform the park.

“We have also built bird houses on trees, mannequins depicting Chipko movement and efforts to save earth from global warming. Residents, especially senior citizens and children, are upbeat about the new project. We have also installed different lightings at the park,” Malik added.

Officials said the corporation is planning to rope in residents to maintain the park.

Praveen Chaudhary, the local councillor, said that he has received a good feedback from residents and also other councillors of the corporation.

“People, especially children and women, are overjoyed about the way the park looks now. Many councillors from other wards have also shown keen interest in developing such parks in their areas. This will pave way to encourage residents to get message of segregation of waste, its recycling and need to preserve nature,” Chaudhary added.

Namita Sharma, the director of the NGO, said that it took about two months for the team to ready the park and finetune the arrangements for a final look.

“The team worked for at least 14 hours a day, besides other members were also busy in crafting the display items at our workshop. We received a lot of support from residents who regularly visited day and night to have a look at the progress of the work. The items installed as part of theme will encourage children gain knowledge about the culture,” Sharma added.

Each item on display in park has display boards installed by their side. These board display the list of scrap items used for each one of them.