nagpur near the entrance gate of ganga kaveri apartments in raj nagar are two big bins labelled wet waste and dry waste every day around 20kgs of household waste generated from 27 flats of this building goes to these bins but only after sorting outat a time when the nagpur municipal corporation nmc is attempting to implement segregation at source presenting an exemplary blueprint of it are a handful of gated communities in the city which have been institutionalizing the process some even before rules came into placeits been over four years since all the 16 flat owners of laxmi apartments in civil lines have been segregating their household waste in different categories right from ewaste plastic leaf litter newspapers and tubelights and bulbs we have three large bins in which we keep segregated waste from every house the blue bin is for recyclable plastic waste yellow for polythene bags and red for waste like medicine strips says resident anasuya kale chhabrani who is the forerunner of the initiativethe residents have identified plastic and ewaste recyclers to whom they hand over the collected waste every month apart from this we have a composter for kitchen and leaf wastewe use the compost in our societys garden and also for roadside trees says chhabrani the apartment is also ensuring scientific disposal of sanitary waste through a dispenseranother such environmentally conscious abode is ganga kaveri apartments where every house has two dustbins for wet and dry waste even before the nmc we made it mandatory for all the residents to segregate waste on a daily basis we hired a private janitor who has strict instructions to not collect unsegregated waste says sandeep agrawal secretary of the residential societyafter collecting waste from all the flats the janitor keeps the segregated waste in two separate bins kept inside the building premises the segregated waste is finally handed over to the collection vehicles of private operator bvg says agrawalthough initially it took a while to persuade all the residents to follow the rule it soon became a routine to make sure that no air pollution is caused due to burning of leaf litter the society came up with an ingenious solution by layering the garden soil with fallen leaf litter the leaves would decompose easily providing a natural soil bed for the plants now its been nearly four years and we have not purchased extra soil adds agrawalanother resident kavita singhal prepares bioenzymes from waste of citrus fruits i also prepare compost from kitchen waste which is used in the buildings garden when it comes to waste segregation the onus is more on citizens she says for the residents of laxmi apartments the environmentfriendly practice also leads to a sense of satisfaction we are proud to setup a good example for the societys children after all change begins at home says chhabrani