Garbage: Bellandur pilot to show the way?

Bellandur was one of the earliest localities to adapt to '2 Bins, 1 Bag' disposal method. While Malleswaram led the city on garbage segregation at source, Namma Bengaluru had still not found a credible alternative to dispose the garbage, other than be at the mercy of pourakarmikas. Today, impressed by Kasa Mukta Bellandur's novel initiative (with the support of Solid Waste Management Round Table), other cities such as Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Gurgaon have adopted the ‘Bengaluru Model’.

So what is the jazz and all that about ‘2 Bins, 1 Bag’? Lalita Mondretti, an early advocate of '2 Bins, 1 Bag', said, “In 2013, a door-to-door survey across many parts of the city proved that nobody really followed a method to dispose of garbage. Some used bins, some plastic bags and all sorts of garbage ended in the same place. After going through the replies, it struck that we just had to channelise the garbage. And soon, '2 Bins, 1 Bag' was born.” The concept was born with the vision to make garbage segregation easy and simple, Lalita added.

Believing in the vision of Lalita and like-minded volunteers from various resident welfare associations, over 120 apartment complexes out of the 200 in Bellandur ward have switched to ‘2 Bins, 1 Bag’. Explaining how Bellandur has adopted to the ‘Bengaluru Model’, Lalita said, “A garbage segregation kit along with pamphlet is provided to every apartment in the locality. The housekeeping staff and maids are taught the colour-coded segregation and they dump wet waste in a green drum every day so that it’s easy for the pourakarmikas to collect only wet waste. On Saturday, weekly once, dry waste is collected from a sack. The sanitary waste too is disposed as and when it accumulates.”

Since most residents in the area follow the colour coded segregation, it’s easy for the maids and pourakarmikas to do their job. The garbage is collected door-to-door by the housekeeping staff in apartment complexes in order to ensure that only the right kind of waste has gone into the bin. A majority of the apartments have tied up with Hasiru Dala, an NGO, which picks up the garbage from houses and transports it to the KCDC plant.

“It is interesting to note that only four apartments used the services of Hasiru Dala when we started the initiative. Today, the NGO caters to 72,000 households which use 2 Bins, 1 Bag method,” Lalitha added. As there are very few individual homes in Bellandur, their drive has been mostly associated with apartment complexes. However, new residential layouts too have switched to this method and interestingly, even the BBMP garbage contractors have switched to the garbage transportation methods followed by Hasiru Dala. “Now, even the BBMP contractors collect garbage in separate vehicles and follow the rules of Hasiru Dala. We can see the change happening,” she added.

Fuelled by the idea of garbage segregation, many apartments in Bellandur have installed composting plants and are effectively managing the garbage generated at home. “An idea of a few volunteers supported by Solid Waste Management Round Table NGO has changed the way thousands of families are disposing garbage in the city. We are confident Bengaluru will be a model city soon,” she says.