Mysuru: Mysuru city has been conferred with the ‘Four Leaves Award’ at the Centre for Science and  Environment (CSE) convention on Urban Solid Waste Management held in New Delhi on June 7.

While Mysuru has performed well as the city with the best processes to remain clean, Bengaluru scores low in the assessment of the ‘Forum of Cities that Segregate.’ Mysuru which bagged the ‘Cleanest Medium City’ Award in the Swachh Survekshan-2018 is leading the way in waste segregation.

The Forum, started by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), features Mysuru and Bengaluru apart from 24 other cities from 14 States that have aimed to have 100% segregation. The CSE released the 2017-18 assessment report of the performance of 20 of these 26 forum cities. Based on the findings of the assessment report, the best performing cities were selected and the Leaves Awards were conferred on them.

MCC Health Officer Dr D.G. Nagaraju received the Award. Speaking to Star of Mysore this morning, Dr. Nagaraju said that it was a very important award and recognises the concerted efforts of the MCC in waste segregation. “We are proud to receive the award and at the same time it increases our responsibility towards solid waste segregation. We will lay more stress on solid waste management and its segregation,” he said.

“Sweeping cities is only a small part of the solution to the problem of keeping our cities clean — what is more important is sustainable treatment, recycle and reuse of the waste that they generate,” said Chandra Bhushan, Deputy Director General, CSE, while announcing the awards. The parameters of ‘Four  Leaves Award’ included segregation at source, collection, transportation, wet waste and dry waste processing, adoption of decentralised systems, inclusion of informal sector in municipal systems and adoption and enforcement of solid waste management bye-laws and enforcement of Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016.

As per the report card, Mysuru is segregating 80 per cent of its waste at source and has seven zero waste management units. The city has a 200 tonnes per day (TPD) centralised composting facility as well as a sanitary landfill site.

Bengaluru gets a low score in CSE’s assessment as the city registered segregation levels below 60 per cent. While it reflects good collection and transportation facilities, processing seems to be lax with majority of the waste being treated in centralised composting plants.

However, both the cities are yet to adopt by-laws as per the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016. Mysuru fares much better in enforcing the major provisions of the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016.