Chennai, Nov 10:
The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) cleared an estimated 600 tonnes of spent firecracker waste across the metropolitan area following Deepavali celebrations, isolating chemical debris from everyday domestic garbage to avoid environmental degradation.
The civic body deployed 600 conservancy workers and 350 specialized waste-lifting trucks across all 15 administrative zones. Sanitation teams utilized 30,000 heavy-duty 50-kg collection bags to ensure that burned cracker remnants, cardboard tubes, sulphur residue, and metallic powders were swept up directly from arterial roads, residential streets, and stormwater drain gratings.
Civic authorities had conducted sustained outreach ahead of the festival urging citizens not to mix firecracker discards with wet domestic waste. Officials confirmed that the collected hazardous cracker waste is being transported in sealed trucks to the industrial hazardous waste management facility in Gummidipoondi for controlled, high-temperature incineration in compliance with Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board regulations.