Gurugram, Sep 29 (IANS): In a bid to make city plastic free, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) came up with exchange offer of taking single-use plastics from residents and giving them food grains of the same weight.

Such an offer is turning out beneficial for rag pickers who store 5 to 6 kg single-use plastic and can exchange it with the grains at the outlets of MCG.

"Rag pickers are the ones who reach last mile to collect plastics. Hence, we have introduced such a scheme for them to collect as much plastics from the city as they can and recycle it for constructive purpose like making roads," said Indrajeet Kulharia, joint commissioner of MCG.

"We have exchanged 50 kg rice from an outlet situated at old MCG office located at Civil Lines on Sunday. MCG has decided to install such outlets in every locality so that rag pickers can easily approach those centres and exchange plastics with food grains," Kulharia said.

Amit Khatri, the commissioner of MCG said: "Such an offer will work in the long run to make city plastic free which will eventually save our soil and environment."

"We have taken initiatives such as setting up door-to-door garbage collection units and segregating it in recycle machines. Still, large amount of waste is found on roads.

In this case, rag pickers can make huge difference to save our environment and hence we are encouraging them, Khatri said.

"We should have to put break on pollution so that our next generation would live in clean environment," Khatri added.