Chennai: Thiruveedhi Amman Koil Street Residents Association (TAKSRA), over the last two years are involved in many environment conscious initiatives and their efforts were recognised by the State Government as they bagged the Pollution Control Board’s green award recently.
The award was presented to them for the green initiatives they have implemented in their locality in 2018. The award was given by the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, Edappadi Palaniswamy on 13 June to TAKSRA, along with four other resident associations in the city namely The Central Park South, Sabari Towers Apartment Owners Association, Ceebros Boulevard and Ramaneeyam Eden.
Speaking about it after receiving the award, KL Bala from TAKSRA said, “We are very happy that while all the other awards were given to residential complexes, TAKSRA is the only association representing a street as a whole, which is a much bigger community.”
Speaking about the green initiatives that they have been practicing, he says “Some of our initiatives are every household has a composting pit and the flower waste, vegetable and dry leaves waste go straight into composting. The remaining waste, which is the plastic waste is dropped in a bin which is getting collected by a recycling company. So no waste goes to the kabaddiwala. We have been doing it successfully in every building of our street. From a community standpoint, complete segregation is happening in our street making it a bin-less street,” he adds.
“We are constantly creating an awareness to the people to manage their waste. The whole street whether it is a flat or an individual house cooperates and practices it in unison. and since the whole community is doing it together, it is the main reason we won this award. As a community we are also using the facility of micro composting implemented by the corporation park. My suggestion is why not other communities learn from TAKSRA,” he further adds.
Apart from these initiatives TAKSRA is also doing water conservation, drip irrigation and Bala informs that they are also planning to implement gray water recycling soon. “We also have a street garden and it is maintained by a gardener. We are trying to motivate many more communities to take inspiration from us and carry forward the initiatives in their community as well,” Bala says.