200+ housing societies register for BMC’s special waste pick-up | Mumbai News

Mumbai: As many as 209 housing societies and establishments, including 97 housing complexes, 96 beauty parlours, 12 educational institutions, and four women’s hostels, have registered for the special collection service launched by BMC for collecting domestic sanitary and special care waste. The service is meant to collect sanitary and personal use items — used sanitary pads, diapers, expired medicines, and bandages or cotton contaminated with urine, blood, saliva, pus, and faeces.
BMC is expected to start sending vehicles for collection service for domestic in a day or two. “We require some more time to carry out training of housing societies and establishments like beauty parlours on what has to be separated and items that will be collected through this service. NGOs have been engaged for the training. We will also give them a schedule for collection,” said a civic official.

“We are distributing yellow bags for collection of this waste on a day-to-day basis. Initially, people came forward to register themselves for the service on a suo-moto basis. Later, it will be made compulsory,” said Kiran Dighavkar, deputy municipal commissioner, Solid Waste Management.
According to BMC, expired medicines, injections, needles, razor blades, tampons, condoms, and waste generated in beauty parlours is often disposed of with general waste, posing serious health risk to sanitation workers who collect it.