With the villagers of Mandur standing firm against dumping of waste in their backyard, the garbage menace is back to haunt the city. Mounds of uncleared waste lie at street corners across the city. To make matters worse, pourakarmikas have also gone on strike demanding better wages. The BBMP, which was grappling with the garbage fiasco and had made segregation of waste at source mandatory, now finds itself back where it started, with nowhere to dump the tons of waste. Chandrashekar G. and Aleena Alice report

Despite the hiccups, it's hard to blame it all on the BBMP anymore as Bengalureans have failed to fall in line with the segregation of waste at source the civic agency has been insisting on since October 1.
It's easy to put all the responsibility on the BBMP, and lambast it for collecting crores annually for Solid Waste Management (SWM) and failing miserably at it, but are the educated people of Bengaluru doing enough to reduce the waste they are discarding by segregating it into wet and dry at the very least?
The answer has to be `no' as only 38 per cent of the waste is being segregated at source still, going by the BBMP. The situation is gaining in urgency as villagers of Mandur are fed up with being taken for granted and are now protesting hard against dumping of garbage in their midst once again, leaving the BBMP looking helplessly for ways to deal with the mounds of garbage the city continues to generate.
At least 10,000 tonnes of waste has piled up in the city as trucks carrying garbage to the only available landfill at Mandur have been attacked by villagers over the last three days. So far at least 200 trucks have come hurrying back from Mandur after being stoned, to dump the garbage back on the roadsides, creating a sure recipe for breeding of mosquitoes and more diseases like dengue that has already taken lives in the city.

There are not many options before the BBMP, which has exhausted all landfills at its disposal. The Mavallipura landfill which has accumulated about 45 lakh tonnes of waste has been shut down on orders of the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) following the rising health problems of villagers in its vicinity and people around the Terra Firma landfill are no longer willing to have the waste dumped in their midst either.

Despite the growing problem, the BBMP seems to be receiving little help from either the people who seem content with keeping their homes clean but not the city or the contractors who don't seem to care what happens to it as long their coffers are filled. With pourakarmikas engaged by the contractors merrily mixing up even the segregated waste and with no trucks designated for carrying the wet and dry waste seperately, the entire effort at segregation of waste seems to be falling apart.

The question now is will the new contractors who are likely to be engaged in a couple of months (once the legal wrangling over the issue is resolved), toe the BBMP's line? They could if the BBMP makes it mandatory for them to collect only segregated waste and monitors the garbage collection system much more carefully than it has done uptil now. RTI activist S. Amaresh underlines that the BBMP must fix the responsibility of collecting segregated waste on the contractors until such time as Bengalureans get accustomed to the practice. In the meanwhile, the BBMP could also make use of ragpickers to segregate the garbage, equipping themsuitably to work in the unhygienic conditions, he suggests. Is the BBMP listening? No solution in sight yet B engalureans who are showing little civic consciousness with their indifference to garbage segregation, seem to believe that the BBMP will find a landfill to take all their garbage despite its noises about segregation at source.

But the civic agency is finding opposition at every turn when it tries to find a new dumping yard. Its plan to dump garbage at Chintamani came a cropper after local MLA Sudhakar vehemently opposed it and the BMTC's plot seems too far away to ferry the city's garbage to.

Also, projects for turning waste into energy entrusted to Hanjir Biotech Energy Pvt. Ltd, MK Aromatics Pvt. Ltd. and Sataram companies are likely to take a while to materialise as the required plants will take time to establish.

But BBMP chief, Rajneesh Goel continues to hold out hope. Confident that the city will segregate its waste eventually, he says the BBMP is ready to transport wet waste to a distance of about 100 kms from the city and pay `66 per tonne to have it converted to compost.

“Interested farmers can place their request for wet waste with the BBMP with the RTC for their land,“ he says. Q & A WITH BBMP COMMISSIONER RAJNEESH GOEL D espite the city groaning under the stink of its own garbage, BBMP commis sioner, Rajneesh Goel believes i is on the right track. The response has been “good“ from the city to segregation of waste a source, he told the Deccan Chronicle in an interview Excerpts.
What have been the pitfalls of the solid waste management programme?
There are no pitfalls as such. am looking at the positive side Thirty eight per cent of the waste is being segregated in the city We are on the right path and dependence on landfills wil reduce. Decentralised segrega tion and waste processing facili ties will be set up on 400 acres of land available in and around Bengaluru.
Why is there poor response to segregation of garbage at source?
I would call the response good.
There are certain management issues. Once they are put in place the segregation will become a mega success.
Is BBMP lacking in willpower or manpower to make segregation effective?
Not really. In a huge system like this where it has never been tried before there are bound to be some hiccups. The mindset has to change and we need to pull up our socks.
How do you propose to solve the issue of dumping at Mandur and elsewhere? We will keep our communication channels open and give impetus to projects for converting waste to energy and waste to oil and bio-mining. Also the 10 lakh tonnes of accumulated waste at Mandur will be treated using the Israel method. High pressure deodour vapourisation will be used to reduce the stench and discussions will be held with the villagers to send trucks only at night. We will send only 220 trucks to them.
Why is the BBMP not going in for incinerators like in other countries to burn the waste?
The incinerator proposal is before us. Expression Of Interest (EOI) has been invited and a cost benefit analysis is being done. GUEST COLUMN Vani Murthy T he situation right now is uncomfortably dif ficult to understand.
The BBMP should get its act together and ensure that it does not get any worse as Bengaluru is slowly turning into a dumpyard with villagers of Mavallipura and Mandur refusing to let their land be used for the garbage the city produces. People have lost faith in the BBMP, which seems helpless in the face of this crisis.

Those who are trying to segregate the waste, find that the pourakarmikas simply mix it up. Having received little training in handling segregated waste the pourakarmikas are confused about the scheme.
The BBMP should realise that even the pourakarmikas have families to run families and its unfair to deny them the money due to them. Its also time they were provided better working conditions.

And we as citizens too need to realise the gravity of the situation and start taking things into our own hands. It's high time everyone stopped playing the blame game and started dealing with their own garbage. If less garbage is produced , the less there will be for the municipality to dispose of. Every household should compost its own wet waste and only those who have no space for it should give it to the BBMP for disposal.

--The writer is member, Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT) Assurances to farmers of Mandur: ONLY SEGREGATED WASTE WILL BE SENT GARBAGE TRUCKS WILL BE SENT ONLY DURING NIGHT ONLY 220 TRUCKS WILL BE SENT TO MANDUR LANDFILL HIGH PRESSURE DEODOUR CHEMICAL WILL BE SPRAYED TO PREVENT BAD STENCH People who have been segregating waste are unhappy because so far the segregated dry waste has not been collected from their homes. Many apartment complexes do not know how to com post their own waste.

Once people start deal ing with their own waste, most of the prob lem will be solved.

--Dr. Meenakshi Bharath, member, Malleswaram Swabhimana Initiative BBMP is not strategical ly planning for the future. There is no prop er communication within the agency or with the resident welfare associa tions. BBMP's garbage segregation plan is a total failure. People have lost faith in th BBMP because it comes up with plans but does not bother to implement them.

--Mr. Bhaskar, president, Jayanagar Residents' Welfare Association The Mandur issue will only be solved, if people start segregating the waste at source. It's high time we changed our mindset and started seg regating the waste. The BBMP is trying its level best to make sure its plan works, but the old contractors are coming in the way. Once the new contractors are engaged things will fall into place.