A new initiative blooms
The Hindu
During the pandemic, some residents of Chitlapakkam are using gardening to achieve waste management goals
The pandemic might have dealt Chitlapakkam Rising’s solid-waste management initiative a big blow, but the citizens’ group has partly salvaged the situation. The group was relentlessly pushing residents towards practising source segregation when the COVID-19 outbreak hampered its efforts. It now encourages residents to raise gardens, and nurture them with the compost made at home. “Members of our group would go with conservancy workers from door to door to promote waste segregation among residents. Besides, sessions on waste management were conducted for children to make sure they took the message to their parents. The larger aim was to keep our colony clean and reduce the waste going to landfills. To prevent whatever we have achieved so far from going waste, we tried encouraging our neighbours to take up gardening. Once people get into gardening, they may want to segregate waste for the purpose of composting. With this end in view, we formed a WhatsApp group last year, amd its membership has risen to 105. This group has got both seasoned home gardeners and newbies. Members exchange ideas, post photos of the day’s bounty and so on,” says Jaikumar Dhanasekaran, a resident of Chitlapakkam. To begin with, Jaikumar made videos of gardens beng raised by Sridharan. P and Jaya Ramkumar to show how plants and flowers add beauty to houses. Sridharan has adorned his independent house with ornamental plants. Along with her neighbour Ranjani, Jaya Ramkumar has converetd a section of the terrace in their apartment into a green patch.More Related News