Accordingly the success story of the waste management system in Alappuzha municipality the ‘Venice of the East has spread far and wide, as officials from across the country are lining up to study how the garbage-strewn town has cleaned itself up. Meanwhile rom the north eastern state of meghalaya to the city of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh to Jammu and Kashmir, officials are flocking to this 46.77 square kilometer area to study the municipality’s ‘zero waste’ story.
Furthermore impressed with the solid waste management measures taken by Alappuzha municipality, the urban affairs department of meghalaya has decided replicate certain projects in Shillong. Recently, the director of Kanpur Smart City also visited to learn about Alappuzha town’s waste management model. Further the secret of this success story is based on a decentralized waste management system, along with the continuous efforts local body authorities to ensure that this is followed.
Moreover instead of collecting all the garbage produced by around 1.7 lakh people in the municipality and dumping it in a single spot, then starting waste management processes, in decentralized waste management, the waste is treated at the source of production itself. Perhaps even as other states are studying lessons from the Alappuzha model, its neighbor, Kochi, choking under a huge waste management crisis, has learnt nothing from its neighbor.
