Mysuru: Thousands of empty plastic water bottles that are discarded everyday by passengers travelling in trains passing through the City Railway Station will now be recycled. The South Western Railway has installed a bottle crushing machine to help recycle the plastic waste generated daily at the station.

The move will ensure the Mysuru City Railway Station is spic and span and will prevent plastic bottles piling up on the platform. The noiseless bottle crushing machine has been installed on Platform 1.

The Station records a daily footfall of nearly 62,000 and the shuffle of feet is a constant on all six platforms of the station. On an average, more than 20,000 empty water bottles are discarded at the Railway Station.

“We found it difficult to dispose of this kind of waste. We were not able to either transport them or clean them on a regular basis. To tackle this menace, a bottle crushing machine was installed,” said Railway officials.

Instead of littering the Station with bottles, customers can now dump it in the machine that has been installed at a cost of Rs. 3.04 lakh. The move comes in the backdrop of the city bidding to regain the ‘Cleanest City’ tag.

“Earlier we used to employ people to collect these bottles and we would pay them. But now with the bottle crushing machine, we can maintain the Station clean. With the onset of summer, the demand for water bottles increase and it will be difficult to discard waste bottles,” the officials said.

Among the salient features of the machine is that it operates automatically depending on the number of bottles fed into it. The bottle is subsequently disintegrated into a fine piece of plastic, and released. Mysuru division is currently in the process of entering into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with plastic manufacturers for collecting crushed pieces of plastic, which is expected to generate revenue for the division.

More machines such as the plastic bottle crusher are expected to be installed in other Stations coming under the division. The Railways is exploring possible tie-ups with private companies to undertake such ventures under their Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives.