KILL THE FILL

The recent waste management crisis in Bangalore has raised a lot of eyebrows and suddenly everybody seems to be panicking. The reason this story needs to be told is because most of our urban cities are heading towards this crisis. It all started when the villagers near one of the landfill started to protest and stopped the garbage trucks from entering their village. BBMP’s efforts to lure them with extra tax and development failed and the protests spread in villages around other landfills. All this happened in a span of less than two months and a notification was finally passed to ensure mandatory segregation of waste at source.

Some of us have been working closely with the govt. on the issue and the industries, NGOs, citizens are all out there to help the govt. in solving this. We all realize that it’s a collective responsibility. However, one month into the new rule, things have started falling apart and there is a complete failure in governance. According to the plan, wet and dry garbage was supposed to be collected separately. Wet waste had to be sent to biogas/composting plants and dry waste was supposed to be handled in collection centres in all wards. But on ground not much is happening. We have piles of garbage lying on the roads and the western media has also started to make noise about this. The articles in New York and Seattle Times have reminded us that the world is watching.

Couple of days back, I was shocked to know that BBMP have started illegally dumping garbage in Bettadasanapura, a village just on the periphery of Electronic city. Hundreds of trucks filled with garbage from Bangalore were being dumped every day and protests from villagers and resident associations in ecity couldn’t do much as the garbage was being dumped under heavy police presence. Electronic city Industries association decided to join the protest and on 30th Oct and we sent out a mailer to employees of Bangalore DC asking to join the protest. Soon after that, I received several mails asking us why we are pressuring BBMP instead of helping them. We are pressuring BBMP not to go back to the unscientific methods for the below reasons.

The newly identified landfill is in middle of the village and there are 8 schools around it. The stink is unbearable and villagers have already started complaining about diseases like Dengue. It is extremely unfair for us to dump our waste in their village. Imagine your neighbor dumping their garbage in your backyard daily or imagine you going back to school after a vacation to find out that there are heaps of garbage stacked up next to your classroom. This is exactly what is happening here. The issue is not about landfilling in ecity, it’s about the very idea of landfilling. There are hundreds of solutions available to treat waste and land filling is definitely not a sustainable solution. Segregating waste at the source is the only way we can achieve sustainable waste management and it is important that all of us start practicing it. This has worked for many Indian cities like Surat, Pune, Ahmedabad, etc and they are moving towards zero waste-to-landfill zones. We have an opportunity to make this happen and can’t give up at this stage and go back to landfilling.

Over the past couple of months, I have observed that segregating at source isn’t the problem. People are more than willing to do it and the Pourakarmikas who collect the waste are well trained and are knowledgeable enough to differentiate between wet and dry garbage. Try talking to them and you’ll realize that they are instructed to dump the garbage in a single truck. The problem lies somewhere between the grassroot and the top level and there is something fishy here. Transportation of garbage to the land fill and even managing land fill is a business worth hundreds of crores. Probably there are elements operating to ensure the segregation process becomes a failure. I don’t know but things like these make my belief stronger that there is a mafia operating in the system.

On the hand, a notification has been passed and citizens have been asked to dispose dry garbage only on Saturdays but we don’t see that everywhere. Solutions to this problem are simple. Let’s us try handling waste locally and change this habit of transporting our waste elsewhere.

We have spoken enough about the issue. While we need to keep the discussions on, it’s time we started doing things. Handle wastes locally. There are hundreds of people in the city who have been composting or producing biogas from wet waste. Let’s learn from each other and start implementing practices.

At Infosys, we have taken a zero-waste goal to will ensure all the organic waste such as food, garden and sludge are handled in our campuses either by setting up biogas plants or by composting. Other category of waste will be handled either in our campuses or will be given to authorized vendors and we’ll make sure that none of our waste end up in landfills. I can assure you that we’ll lead by example and demonstrate this to world soon and also look out for the transformation in electronic city. There are many inspiring stories in Bangalore itself. Malleswaram is a very good example for this. We can’t give up after coming so far. Let’s save Bangalore!

P.S.: Just remember: If you didn’t segregate your waste today, then you are the problem your city is trying to address.

Next time, I’ll write in detail about the technical solutions. Let me know your thoughts.

Photo courtesy: Sindhuja P