A cracker of a campaign to encourage residents to hand over only segregated, dry waste

After every major festival, conservancy workers in Chennai have their hands full. With piles of hazardous cracker waste, paper boxes, and plastic covers used for wrapping, Deepavali would probably take the cake in the amount of mixed waste left on city roads and in residential areas. And when rains enter the equation, segregation becomes doubly challenging for the human hands dealing with waste.

As in the previous year, waste management companies and environment-conscious groups demand that only segregated waste, with the cracker waste a separate collection, be handed over. Various campaigns towards this end had been running across the city. Sumeet Elko, the waste management company engaged by Greater Chennai Corporation for various zones, has been running digital flicker boards at busy junctions educating the public to not mix cracker waste with other household waste.

They have put up flex boards outside most cracker shops, listing the “do’s and don’ts”.