By IANS
Tenkasi : Soft drink giant PepsiCo India Sunday set up a waste management plant in the Tamil Nadu town of Tenkasi in partnership with Exnora International, an environment NGO, aiming to make it garbage-free.
The Tenkasi project is the third of its kind in south India and will benefit 1,550 houses in three wards of the small town, about 900 km south of Chennai.
The total grant for such projects in south India is over Rs.9.9 million, the company said.
The project is a continuation of PepsiCo and Exnora International’s partnership towards managing domestic solid waste in an environmental friendly manner.
The programme was initiated and implemented in the Pammal municipal corporation in Kancheepuram district in 2005.
The partners then extended it to the districts of Cuddalore, Nagapattinam and Tenkasi in December 2005. The Nagapattinam and Cuddalore projects became operational in February and April this year.
“PepsiCo is committed to take this programme on a pan-India basis and will be launching a similar project in north India soon,” said Abhiram Seth, executive director (exports & external affairs) of PepsiCo India.
Exnora vice-chairperson Mangalam Balasubramanian said: “PepsiCo is amongst the few companies that sees the importance of such a significant environmental initiative and it has actively supported this cause.”
The community will be involved in house-to-house garbage collection, Exnora said. While organic waste will be converted into vermi compost using earthworms, inorganic waste will be sorted out into different categories and recycled.
Inorganic waste, which cannot be recycled, will be sent to the municipal refill.
The scheme will be extended to more wards and the whole town in the next phases.