garbage

With the expected implementation of new Ward Committee Bye-laws/Rules drafted by the BBMP, the citizens can now question the ward committees on litter or garbage in their ward. The best part is, they can even move court if the complaints to the ward committee or the corporator do not solve the problem. Councillors had debated on whether BBMP should form Bengaluru-level ‘Bye-laws’ or state-level ‘Rules’, for ward committees. File Pic. The draft of the Byelaws/Rules for Ward Committees has been sent to the state government for approval. The final push for the formation of ward committees had come as a…

I went on a 3 hour trip with a few industry leaders as well as BBMP officials yesterday, looking at some of the 'trail' of waste in the city. The idea was to get buy-in from all the chambers of industry to start doing whatever they can within their own campuses and also understand the economics of the waste trail. Three places that we visited all have important learnings to offer.The biogas plant at IIM, Bangalore substitutes for 16 cylinders of LPG each day, out of the wet waste collected on campus itself. It cost about 10 lakhs to set…

After several months of uncleared garbage raising a stink in the city, Bangalore seems to be having a brief respite from it. The new Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner H Siddaiah has been working to find a solution to the issue that has been affecting the city. However, the Commissioner is well aware that the respite is only temporary and that the Palike cannot rest easy till more permanent solutions are found to manage the estimated 3,500 tonne waste generated in the city. He was speaking at a symposium titled "Solutions to impending public health crisis through governance in…

Instead of letting corporators and garbage contractors decide on the garbage problem, public can get directly involved now. High Court has directed that each ward in the city should form a ward committee, which will include 10 residents of the ward and will be headed by the local corporator. The committees are supposed to be functioning by January 21st; you can approach your corporator and suggest that you or any competent person you know, be included in the committee. BBMP is holding a Council meeting on 15th, during which corporators will submit their nominations.The interim order came in a PIL…

Nearly 500-600 trucks with trash, operating in the dark of the night, dump their contents in Mandur every day. “After 10 pm, the trucks start pouring in and it goes on till early hours of the morning,” says Munianjaneyappa, 72, a resident of Mandur. Munianjaneyappa walked the entire 25 km of the padayatra from Mandur to Domlur, Bangalore, on Saturday, December 22nd, as part of the Lok Satta-organised 'Dumping SAAKU' campaign. Around 50 people, including residents of Mandur, Lok Satta party supporters - many of them young professionals - and political and social activists took part in the walk. Former…

Background- According to our estimates (made through actual door-to-door surveys) there is no more than 3200 tonnes of waste collected in the city each day. Of this, about 1000 tonnes at the most is wet waste, and the remainder is dry. A small portion (5-10%) is electronic and bio waste.- Current technologies permit most, if not all, of the wet waste to be converted into compost or energy. Composting can be done at different scales - in the home, in neighbourhoods, and in large zones.- A very large chunk of the dry waste can be recycled, even profitably. The recycling…

Apartments are bulk generators; we won't collect garbage from them. No, apartments are not bulk generators; we will collect waste from them. BBMP has been going back and forth on this issue for over two months now. As the December 1st deadline, for waste segregation at source is here, there is still no clarity on where the waste from the apartment complexes is going to go. Media reports have quoted BBMP Commissioner Rajneesh Goel saying that apartments are now excluded from the bulk generators list. However BBMP's website has the notification dated October 1st, that has categorised apartments under bulk…

It was a pourakarmika who, last Friday, provided  the answer to the vexing question of what to do about the mounds of garbage  that now characterise our city. She was sweeping up the rubbish from the road in front of my apartment -- mud and muck, mixed with soggy bits of paper, plastic, heaps of dried flowers and leaves rotting after the overnight drizzle, dog mess, the lot. -- and carefully piling it right in front of my door. This new mound by the kerbside was also blocking the path of the rain water to the drains  along the edge…

Bangalore has been facing a serious problem in getting garbage cleared on a daily basis, especially since the past few months, with the result that garbage dumps are seen all over the city. BBMP is trying to solve the problem but not much result is seen on the streets of Bangalore.Any scheme that the BBMP adopts will have to take into consideration the following issues.1. The waste generated has to be segregated at source. There is no alternative to this in spite of the various objections raised by some groups, elected representatives, BBMP officials and the garbage contractors. Some citizens have…

Garbage is creating a lot of noise in Bangalore these days. It is the biggest nuisance that development causes in all urban centres. Drive to an interior village (other than the village where your city dumps the garbage, of course) and you will find it pretty clean, as compared to your own neighbourhood, where mounds of plastic garbage lie strewn beside every posh apartment complex or housing locality! Even in villages, the garbage that you spot mostly contains plastic bags which have entered the lives of the rural folk too. Other than that, most of the garbage collected in a…