Thiruvananthapuram: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as part of its plastic waste programme, will invest Rs 87 lakh in the state capital to set up recycling and mechanised plastic waste segregation facility to address the growing plastic waste menace.
The UNDP has tied up with the City Corporation, Clean Kerala Company Ltd to recycle and upgrade the Resource Recovery Centres (RRC) at Manacaud and Muttathara.
Health standing committee chairman K.Sreekumar said that the unit would be ready by November this year. "We have signed a memorandum of understanding with the UNDP. They will be providing technology, training, resources for making the project into a reality," said Mr Sreekumar.
UNDP is already providing this service for a number of other cities in India and Thiruvananthapuram is the first city in South India being chosen by UN for the programme. "The operation and maintenance of the facilities would be carried out by UNDP for a period of five years. Now plastic waste segregation is not happening. Various type of plastic waste is brought together and the segregation unit would help segregate high-quality recyclable plastic from the low volume small format plastics," said an official.
The corporation is busy sprucing up the RRCs to hand it over to the UNDP. "Once the bypolls are over, the project will take off. They will implement the project in no time as installation of equipment could be done quickly," said the official.
