At Hyderabad Railway Stations, Machines To Recycle Waste Plastic Bottles

The South Central Railways has installed machines for crushing and recycling plastic bottles at select stations in Hyderabad in a bid to motivate residents to come forward and dispose plastic bottles for recycling.

The installations were made at Kachiguda, Secunderabad and Nizamabad stations along with Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.

These crusher machines are of the size of a refrigerator and have the capacity to crush around 5,000 bottles per day.

The crushed bottles come out as fine plastic pieces, ready to be sold as scrap in the market or to be re-used to make bags and T-shirts.

"The aim to install these machines is to protect the environment. If any passenger wants to throw the plastic water bottle, they can put it into this machine, which will crush the water bottle," Chief Public Relations Officer of South Central Railways, Uma Shankar told ANI.

These machines can around 5,000 bottles per day.

The initiatives are being taken to not just prevent littering, but also to discourage the use of plastic.

Earlier this month, the Telangana government instructed municipal bodies across the state to stop plastic use.

Guidelines were also issued to discontinue the usage of single-use plastic items like plastic and tetra bottles, single-use straws, plastic/styrofoam tea cups/containers, plastic below 50 microns or plastic-coated items and other forms of single-use /banned plastic.

Earlier this month, a Chennai-based waste management company launched a mobile app-based smart trashcans which were installed in city's Mylapore area.