In its bid to persuade the city's inhabitants to happily accept the newly levied "public utility charges' and pay them regularly, the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) has planned a "special cleanliness drive' in all the 18 towns of the metropolis.

Visiting the historic Sinhagad, one of the most favoured hangout of Puneites, will now come with a price, if you carry plastic items along. As an effort to curb the environmental pollution caused by plastic, visitors will be made to pay a penalty in the range of Rs 50 to Rs 100, if he or she is seen carrying plastic bags or bottles. "If the visitor, on his return from the fort, is found carrying less plastic than what he took along, the deposit amount will be kept as penalty,' said State Forest Minister Babanrao Pachpute, who was in the city for a hearing at Council Hall, on Monday.

With the High Court getting tough on local bodies to maintain proper collection and disposal of garbage, several panchayats in Tiswadi taluka have begun the process of identifying disposal sites. According to reports, several panchayats in the taluka have started identifying the disposal sites to avoid fine of Rs 1,000 per day, which the High Court directed the government officials to impose on the local bodies.

The municipal corporation in Coimbatore, whose anti-plastics campaign has been de railed by a high court stay order, could learn something from an ongoing initiative across the country, at Guwahati. The two are based on different premises, if aimed at the same end, but this is an issue where any useful thinking is welcome. The Coimbatore initiative, as we have reported, was to ban any use or sale of plastic bags (upto a certain thickness), tumblers, plates and other throw-away items; in a welcome change, the campaign began and got going with strong all-party political backing.

Nagpur: Rising petroleum prices are likely to make PET products costly. With crude on the boil, polymers the raw material for making plastic products have become dearer by over Rs 10,000 per tonne within a month. As a result there is a likelihood of plastic packaging material manufacturers passing on the cost hike to endusers.

z. Manikandan Tenders to be floated for the Rs.44-crore project once the State gives administrative sanction GIVEN APPROVAL: The proposed compost yard in Venkatamangalam near Vandalur.

By R Haldorai WITH the Coimbatore Plastic Manufacturers and Merchants Association obtaining a stay in the High Court against the ban on the use of plastics, Coimbatore Corporation has stopped raiding shops, seizing and slapping fine on sellers and users for the past two weeks. The use of plastic carrybags has since increased in every nook and corner of the city. Many councillors, who were not aware of the stay, raised doubts blaming the corporation health wing officials for being inactive.

While municipal councils have foiled several attempts of the High Court to get them to attend to the garbage problem in their respective jurisdictions in the last two years, the High Court on Wednesday contemplated imposing fine on defaulting civic bodies would work as deterrent.

The proposed garbage depot on 57 acres of forest land at Punawale, which is facing severe opposition from all quarters, has put the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) in a tight spot. As political parties are up in arms against the depot coming up near the Mumbai-Pune highway, there are a list of 14 conditions whose compliance is being sought by the forest department.

City incinerates 1 tonne bio-medical waste a day Nearly one tonne of bio-medical waste is generated and disposed of in Pune each day. While the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has outsourced the activity to a private firm Sun Enviro Limited to collect the waste and dispose it at the incineration facility at Kailash crematorium, efforts are now underway to woo over 6,000 small dispensaries to join the scheme. According to Piyush Solanki, assistant general manager of Sun Enviro, "so far, only 250 dispensaries and clinics have been registered.'