BHAKTAPUR, DEC 24 - Bhaktapur Durbar Square and its surrounding areas look cleaner these days after 25 local hotels and the Bhaktapur municipality teamed up to tidy up the city in a systematic manner. The hotel entrepreneurs nowadays separate biodegradable and non-biodegradable garbage and the municipality converts the biodegradable waste into compost manure while non-biodegradable materials are stored at a separate area in Hunamanghat and then sold to scrap stores.

The new initiative began after hoteliers formed a committee on November 10 to assist the municipality to manage garbage generated from their hotels. The municipality these days mobilises a garbage collecting truck along with two workers in Durbar Square, Taumadi Square and Balakhu areas twice a day. The truck has two separate buckets for biodegradable and non-biodegradable materials.

“This is just a beginning, we have planned to implement this measure throughout the district,” said Dilip Kumar Suwal, a municipality official. He said the municipality collects half tonne of garbage from hotels and restaurants in the area every day. He said they produce around 70 kilograms of compost manure from the waste materials each day. The manure, however, will be used only after three months. Besides this, the municipality has also been conducting door-to-door campaign in six of its 17 wards in the initial phase for effective waste management. Local residents in the area said they now feel that the city is cleaner. They said even the number of stray dogs decreased after the new system was initiated. “We used to dump garbage in open spaces at night in the past, and street dogs used to feed on them,” said Mahesh Bhakta Joshi, owner of Balakhu-based Vajra Guest House. The municipality has allocated Rs 60 million for waste management programmes in the area.