People Can Exchange Plastic For Free Aahar Meal In Odisha Capital

Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to give a free Aahar meal for every half kilo of plastic.

BMC official said that the programme in collaboration with UNDP and Touch Stone Foundation will be launched on Monday.

“The programme will be launched at the Aahar centre located near the BMC head office in Kalpana Square. All the 11 Aahar centres in the state capital will be included in the programme,” said a BMC official.

With an objective to provide cooked hot meals to the poor and needy people at an affordable cost of Rs 5, the Aahar scheme had been launched in the state on April 1, 2015. State Housing and Urban Development (H&UD) Department is the nodal department for the scheme.

The initiative being citizen centric has the objective of “Meal for Plastic” where the strategy is to facilitate collection of household plastic from the city in return of one meal. It is expected that BMC’s endeavor providing one Aahar meal against half Kg. plastic will bring a sustainable change in the habit of households and promote segregation at source.

Functionality of the programme will  as followings.

• AahaarKendra’s counters shall accept/allow only one Kg. plastic per person per day in exchange of two coupons for the same day. In case of half Kg. plastic one coupon will be provided.
• The representative of Touchstone Foundation at Aahaar Kendra will maintain date wise record through a register with location of Aahaar Kendra, name, mobile number, amount of plastic deposited, and sign of depositor. The register will be countersigned by the representative of Touchstone Foundation.
• UNDP shall collect the plastic from the AahaarKendra on weekly basis or whenever the bins are filled, whichever is earlier as intimated by the Touchstone Foundation representative working at the Aahaar Kendra.
• The plastic deposited by the public will be weighed with a variation of +/- 10% to nearest whole number for exchange of meal.
• DC (Welfare), BMC shall implement the drive “Meal for Plastic” and shall execute agreement between BMC, UNDP and Touchstone Foundation.