India’s 2nd Cleanest City Bhopal Launches Compost Drive & Smart Bins

In order to eliminate the practice of burning of leaves, which have essential micro nutrients, the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) this week has launched ‘Golden Leaf Movement’ where fallen leaves are collected to make compost.

The BMC is ready to help individuals and communities with the process and prerequisites of composting, for free. For the same, BMC has launched a toll-free number 155304. The drive will stop the unnecessary burning of leaves during fall season which aggravates air pollution.

The collected leaves will be taken to four transfer stations in the city, where segregated dry and wet waste is treated, for the process of composting. The leaves shedding in parks are composted there only. The generated compost will then be used to sustain the city’s greenery.

“The city has 300-400 gardens of which some 116 gardens come under BMC. Currently, 33 BMC parks have the facility of onsite composting and each park has three compost units. This aids in the process of composting because we don’t have to collect and transport leaves to some other place. In the second phase of the Golden Leaf Movement we will be constructing compost units in other parks as well,” informs Vijay Datta, Municipal Commissioner to reporters.

To promote composting among residents, RWAs, and bulk waste generators, BMC has come up with a bouquet of incentives. Citizens and societies that will practice composting well, will be offered inducements like free bicycle ride for a day, free parking, free bus ride, some discount in taxes and others.

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Bhopal Introduces Smart Sensors In Bins for waste management

Bhopal has also created a Smart Waste Collecting Monitoring System and smart sensors.

Under Centre’s Smart City Mission, the BMC identified a total of 2,000 public bins that were placed in the market and commercial areas of the city. Of the total public bins, the civic body has till date installed smart sensors in 150 bins.

The GPS-enabled sensors will send out a signal to the officials sitting in the waste control monitoring room once the garbage bin is filled completely. As an indication, the sensors on the screen will turn red from green. As soon as the colour changes, municipal trucks will be sent to the location. The sanitation workers will give an updated status to the officials in the room after all the garbage is removed from the ‘smart bin’.

The BMC garbage trucks move around the city to collect waste twice in a day covering a total of about 22,000 kms every day. The sensors will help in making the entire garbage collecting process swift and smooth.

The HPE company developed country’s first Integrated Control and Command Centre, a cloud-based Universal Internet of Things (UIoT) platform for all the smart cities in Bhopal.

Installing sensors in bins will help Bhopal solve its littering problem to a great extent which in turn will help the city in not only retaining its cleanliness title but also may help increase its chances of securing the first rank in country’s next cleanliness survey.

For the second time in a row, Bhopal was crowned as India’s second cleanest city in the recently announced Swachh Survkeshan 2018 results. The city has successfully implemented 100 percent source segregation in households, commercial establishments and bulk generators of the city. About 275 tonnes of waste is being treated by a centralized composting center at Bhanpur and 25 tonnes of waste is treated via decentralized methods.