Berhampur Gets Smarter, 1st In Odisha To Have Underground Waste Bins

Berhampur: Launching a first of its kind initiative to fulfil Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a clean India, the Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC) is all set to operate underground garbage bin facility, a system with semi-underground dustbins placed on the roadside to store wet and dry garbage.

With this, the city has become the first Municipal Corporation in the State to have a smart underground bin system. Installed at a cost of around Rs 5 crore for the initial phase, the project will kick-off after inauguration by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on November 10.

The smart underground bins have been installed at as many as 17 places of the city including Durga Devi temple chhak, Guest House, Circuit House, Binayak Acharya College and several other areas.

However, locals have raised questions on the operation and maintenance of the project alleging that many such projects were launched earlier but administration failed to implement them.

“The underground bin system is a great initiative of BeMC but it should be implemented in a proper way. The bins installed earlier stored garbage but the places looked horrible. Now since garbage is stored underground, there is less chance of people getting infected with mosquito-related diseases,” said Kiran Kumar Sahu, a local.

BeMC Commissioner Chakraborty Singh Rathore said, “The  waste bins have been fitted with sensors that will send alerts to control room as soon as they get filled. We have dashboards that signal green, yellow and red based on the level of garbage in the dustbins. The bins will signal green if the waste level is below 40 per cent; waste up to 70 per cent level will signal yellow and the moment the waste reaches 80 per cent, it will signal red in the dashboard and we will send cranes to empty the bins.”

“This is a complete sensor-based technology. So there will be no problem in the maintenance of the entire system,” assured Rathore.