Thanos has landed in the Bengaluru and Mysuru railway stations – except he’s teal in colour instead of purple, and has decided that half the plastic waste in the world must go. Also, he’s not called Thanos, but Biocrux Pet Bottle Flaking Machine, and has been installed at multiple railway stations by the South Western Railway, in order to reduce plastic pollution in the premises.
The machine takes in empty water bottles – of upto 2 litre capacity – and disintegrates them into plastic flakes, which are then treated and used for producing other items, like bins and even T-shirts.
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In fact, people who feed their bottles into the machine will be rewarded for curbing plastic pollution – for every bottle in Bengaluru stations, an user is credited Rs 5 on their PayTM account. The machines have a provision of entering the mobile number of the user, once a bottle is put in the slot.
The automatic, noiseless crusher costs a little over Rs 3 lakh, and have been installed in a bid to keep the station clean. Officials of the South Western Railways say that, although the station is relatively clean, often discarded water bottles end up in the tracks and floors of the platform.
“Other than keeping the station clean, this will also prevent this single use plastic bottles from being reused, or other harmful practice,” an official told TNM. “Often there are vendors who collect all these disposed bottles and sell them in the market for reuse.”
Officials said that since the machines were installed in January, there has been visible improvement in the amount of plastic waste found in the stations – although much more needed to be done.
“The machine usually takes up 1,000 plastic bottles per day while the average footfall in the station is close to 60,000,” the officer added.
Currently, they’ve installed the crushers in Platform 1 of Mysuru. Similar machines have been installed in Bengaluru’s KSR City Station, Yeshwantpur Station, Cantonment Station and Krishnarajapuram Stations on the occasion of World Environment Day (June 8). Soon, similar machines will be installed in other five platforms of Mysuru and other major stations of the division like Shivamogga and Davanagere.
The machines were also installed in other railway divisions across the country including Ahmedabad, Pune and Mumbai.
The Railways are also trying to use this as a channel of revenue by forming agreements with plastic manufacturers. There are also talks of engaging Corporate Social Responsibility funds to install more of these machines.