NEWS

After trying it out in six colonies in the city, ITC Limited looks set to tie up with five corporations (three in Tamil Nadu and two in Kerala) to expand its Wealth Out of Waste programme, under which it pays for paper waste collected from houses. Six colonies in Coimbatore have joined this programme. The Residents’ Awareness Association, which has brought ITC into waste management in the city, has been generating awareness of this concept. If it is implemented across the city, the Wealth Out of Waste will offer the Coimbatore Corporation a major assistance in its Rs.96-crore Integrated Solid Waste Management Project by sparing it the burden of handling this kind of waste. A tie-up with the Coimbatore Corporation will help ITC get around the problem of finding manpower to collect the waste from 72 wards. But it appears that the Corporation will not clinch any arrangement with the company, as it has already tied up with two other firms for waste management. One of them will take up disposal of biodegradable waste and the other will tap landfill for clearing non-biodegradable waste. According to sources in the civic body, a tie-up between one of the firms and ITC can be facilitated.