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Adar Poonawalla sets up Rs 100 cr fund to aid waste removal

Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis launched the Clean City Movement in Pune today

Adar Poonawalla, CEO, Serum Institute of India has announced to set up Rs 100 crore fund under the Adar Poonawalla Clean City Movement (APCCM) in partnering with Pune Municipal Corporation and Noble Exchange Environment Solutions. It will focus on supporting the Pune Municipal Corporation with infrastructure and management of solid waste, specially focusing on organic waste management.

“This is first-of-its-kind public private partnership (PPP) towards scientific waste management in association with the Pune Municipal Corporation and NobleExchange. Other than the regular CSR activities, we rae raising Rs 100 separately for this initiative. Under this, we aim to cover cleaning of 300 km of roads running across municipal limits of the city. We want to encourage citizens to drive this movement through active participation and appeal to them to segregate the waste at source into dry and wet waste and dispose only using waste bins.”

This movement will cover the city’s network of roads in phases over the next three years. With a fleet of specially designed trucks and thousands of litter bins, this wet waste will be responsibly removed and processed in a processing plant by Noble Exchange Environment Solutions which is a technology and operations partner in this movement.

In the first phase, the APCCM will be rolled out in the three wards of the city. The movement would then be rolled out to cover other wards of the city in a phased pattern. At current estimates, over 1,700 tonnes of waste is generated in the city of Pune of which 52-55 per cent is wet waste in nature. This wet waste removal is expected to result in 542 tonnes of carbon emission saved. Under this, advanced mobile food waste processing vans that will enable processing of organic food waste at the ward. Activation programmes will be run in association with PMC at schools, mohalla committees, residential societies and market places.

Published on Business Standard