In Vengurla, a landfill turns into a garden

In one year, this picturesque town has eliminated the need for a dumping ground. It has also used its plastic waste to build roads.

Sindhudurg’s rural areas may have come out shining in the government’s 2016 cleanliness survey, but its towns are not far behind. In picturesque Vengurla, population 12,000, not only does everyone have access to toilets, they sort their trash into as many as four separate bins - for kitchen waste, paper, plastic, and assorted recyclables.

This 6.5 acre patch of green used to be a filthy, smelly dumping ground. But it now serves as a garden and farm. The hanging bottles serve as helpful reminders of the many recyclable components of garbage, which can be recycled instead of being left to rot.(Anshuman Poyrekar/HT PHOTO)

Each of these is disposed of differently. The result? Landfills stop choking on unsorted rotting garbage, and literally bear fruit. On the 6.5-acre municipal site where piles of trash lay until a year ago, a green patch functions as orchard, farm and garden. Banana, coconut, cashew and mango trees thrive; marigold, rose and tulsi have been planted. Their first crop of corn is ready for sale.

The dumping ground has a biogas plant that fuels waste management machines, and earns an income from selling glass and metal to recyclers. You can even walk in, sit amid the greenery and enjoy free wi-fi.

Ramdan Kokare, who took over as Vengurla’s chief municipal officer last year, is the man driving the town’s exemplary sanitation schemes. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT PHOTO )

“Mixed waste is a problem, but segregated waste is wealth,” says Ramdas Kokare, Vengurla’s chief municipal officer and the man driving its waste disposal projects since April 2015. He organised awareness meetings in neighbourhoods, made sure garbage trucks made it to all their collection points, and levied a Rs 500 daily fine on families and housing societies that failed to segregate their trash.

“It took us two years for the segregation habit to form,” admits Dilip Samant, 60, a lifelong resident. “But the town has become much cleaner in recent years even as tourism has grown.”

Dilip Samant, a businessman and lifelong resident of Vengurla, says the garbage segregation habit (you can see two bins by the door, green for wet waste, blue for recyclables) took two years to form, but it’s resulted in a cleaner city. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT PHOTO)

“Once you get into the habit, the two-bin system is actually more convenient,” adds homemaker Heena Malik. “Your waste doesn’t smell, and the bins are easier to keep clean.”

Kokare‘s aim is to make Vengurla a zero-landfill city. As a first step, 5 tonnes of plastic bags and wrappers have been processed into bitumen and used to lay 5km of roads across town.

The Aroskars drive down one of the several roads in Vengurla that has been built from bitumen, a material derived from discarded plastic like wrappers and sachets. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT PHOTO)