Mumbai to purchase recycling collection vehicles

 The city of Mumbai’s government, through the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC), says it will soon purchase additional trucks to collect recyclables that some residents have been sorting separately for some time.

According to an article by Mid-Day Infomedia Ltd., the BMC has pledged to buy more than 400 trucks to serve housing estates that collect dry recyclables separately.

The online article says numerous critics, including a well-known cricket player, emerged from the housing estates after watching the dry recyclables be tipped into the same trucks that were collecting the wet waste.

The BMC has reportedly acknowledged that “of the 10,500 tonnes of solid waste generated every day, only 1,200 tonnes is being sent for recycling [because] the BMC did not have separate vehicles for collecting wet and dry waste.”

Responding to the criticism, the BMC says it will purchase 410 new trucks to carry only dry materials that will deliver them to transfer stations, rather than going straight to the landfill. Mid-Day Infomedia reports the BMC is saying it will take “about three months” for the new trucks to be commissioned and ready.