Bengaluru: It’s garbage, garbage and more garbage all over the city. Though BBMP is making a head start with garbage segregation, it seems to be clueless on dealing with low value plastic. Covers of all sizes, shapes and colours are floating on the road or flying across bikers’ faces. The misery will continue as cement factories have shut doors to such wet plastic.
he brouhaha over garbage mismanagement in Namma Bengaluru fails to end. Just when the state government and the BBMP thought the code to end the garbage crisis was cracked with making garbage segregation mandatory, a new challenge in the form of ‘low value plastic’ has challenged the civic agency.
Less than 40 micron plastic covers of all sizes and colours are all over the place in the city, even while BBMP is sending only wet waste to the four new processing plants in Seegehalli, Kannahalli, Doddabidrakallu and Chikkanagamangala. The plastic menace has taken over the city with new plants opening its doors only to segregated wet waste. Despite the BBMP preparing to manage dry waste, it has failed to find a solution to treat low value plastic. The reason: Low returns, lack of space and lack of supervision.
After door-to-door collection of garbage, the pourakarmikas segregate mixed waste at collection points and send only wet waste to BBMP trucks. While high value plastic like milk packets, water bottles, shampoo bottles and glass jars which fetch good money are picked by the pourakarmikas, low value plastic like covers and less than 40 microns hand covers are left to litter the road. Though the BBMP has designated warehouses to stock such plastic, for the last few weeks such low plastic is not being transported to factories or godowns. Hence, plastic covers can be seen flying across the road or floating in the rain water.
Meanwhile, the worry of dry waste laced with rain water affecting piled up stocks in warehouses too is bothering garbage contractors, points out Mayor Manjunath Reddy.
“With Doddaballapur too erupting in protests against mixed garbage, the BBMP ensured that only wet waste was sent to garbage processing plants. We did not, however, worry about disposing low value plastic as our focus was on wet waste. Just when we thought wet waste was taken care of, dry waste, especially low value plastic started to pile up on road. As it’s been raining for the last one month, nobody wants the plastic waste,” Mr Reddy explains. While garbage segregation should have provided relief from the crisis, it seems to be posing new problems. And this is not the end of it, warns solid waste management expert N.S Ramakanth.
“The capacity of dry waste collection centres is only 2-3 tonnes. Even if the BBMP wants to dispose of plastic at these centres, there will be no enough space. Excessive dumping of plastic waste in dry waste centres will open a whole new can of worms,” he warns.
‘BBMP needs exclusive Solid Waste Management Cell’
- Year 2012: City made international news for its failure to handle garbage, especially with Mavallipura, a major landfill which took most of the city’s garbage erupting in protest.
- Year 2014: CM Siddaramaiah promises Mandur, another major landfill, that garbage will be stopped by November.
- Year 2015: After all the doors of landfills, quarries and dumping yards close, three years after the High Court order, BBMP makes garbage segregation mandatory. Alas, it’s still battling with garbage crisis!
When Chief Minister Siddaramaiah promised Mandur that Bengaluru will no longer send its garbage to the landfill, little had he known that his promise to the village will boomerang. For, the BBMP was not prepared to treat the garbage that was not going to the landfills.
As a result, the garbage was sent to other landfills and quarries, increasing the burden on small landfills. Soon, villagers near smaller landfills like Lakshmipura, S.Bingipura too came out in protest and yet again the government’s intervention was needed.
Now, with all the landfills closed and villagers near the new garbage processing plants refusing to allow high quantity of garbage, the BBMP was forced to smell the coffee.
The BBMP, which should have given a jolt to the zonal Joint Commissioners in 2012, had no choice but to tighten its strings. Consequently, it pulled up the ward level officials and even instructed the pourakarmikas to refuse mixed waste.
Despite all these efforts, garbage segregation at source has failed to kick off due to the lack of supervision at field level, observes solid waste management expert N.S Ramakanth.
“The city’s population is growing and the BBMP needs an exclusive Solid Waste Management Cell to monitor and supervise garbage management. The BBMP has a shortage of 70 junior health inspectors let alone the seniors. They do not have environment engineers and the civil engineers don’t have the interest to work towards garbage management. So how can we expect the crisis to resolve?” he asks.
Mr Ramakanth points out that now with both potholes and garbage turning into crisis, the lack of staff has added to the mismanagement. The BBMP needs exclusive, dedicated environmental engineers to resolve the crisis and monitor garbage management, he suggests.
Q&A with Subodh Yadav Special Commissioner (Solid Waste Management)
Why is garbage disposal affected yet again? Why do we see garbage on every corner of Bengaluru’s streets?
The fact that you are saying yet again means that solid waste management was not affected in between for some period. Yes, there’s plastic waste in some of the localities in the city. But these heaps of garbage are not mixed waste- it’s only dry waste such as plastic less than 40 microns and other low value plastic. These things are the leftovers of segregated garbage.
Doesn’t the BBMP have the capacity or the equipment to treat low-value plastic? Why is it left to rot on the road?
We have decided to send the low-value plastic to cement factories and Terra Firma plant to further process it. Though they are willing to treat the waste, due to the rains, the dry waste has moisture and such waste can’t be sent to factories. We need some time and in the next 2-3 days, we hope to clear the garbage on streets.
Every ward has Dry Waste Collection Centres (DWCC) to deal with plastics. Yet, why is BBMP not able to dispose dry waste in a timely manner?
There are 189 DWCCs and the capacity of these centres is location specific. For instance, in core wards where there are markets and malls, the receiving capacity of the centres is higher compared to residential areas. However, not all plastic can be handled at these centres alone. Some of the dry waste on road only needs to be transported to godowns and factories, and that’s taking time.
Has enforcing mandatory segregation of garbage become a bitter medicine for BBMP?
We had no choice but to make garbage segregation at source compulsory. So far, garbage segregation was never stringent and even pourakarmikas had not enforced segregation at primary level. We need a proper arrangement and though we have the solutions we are not able to adopt it due to the rains.
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