Activists feel that garbage problem cannot be fixed in one day; awareness among public should be the first step.
The garbage problem in the city is not something that can be wished away. There are solutions to tackle the problem, but these need hard decisions and proper implementation of rules.
The recent garbage crisis in the city brought to the fore exactly the serious problems with our current system of dumping waste. While the BBMP was faced with closed landfills, the solution that they came up with was finding another land to dump the waste. According to solid waste management experts, BBMP’s way of dealing with garbage is improper.
Various NGOs working on solid waste management and civic issues have now come together to convince the BBMP that segregation at the source is the only way out of the problem. As a first step to this, the organisations held demonstrations of segregating garbage in Jayanagar, Malleswaram, Rajajinagar and Russell Market, with over a 100 pourakarmikas working on segregating garbage.
According to a spokesperson, “The entire aim of segregation is to reduce the pressure on landfills. Garbage is not a problem that can be addressed as a one off effort. Today we may clean 500 tonnes of garbage, but this is going to be back by tomorrow morning. We cannot simply dump it and turn the land into a dump yard,” she said.
Segregation and garbage management has to be made into a way of living, she added. “We have to institutionalise garbage management. Make it mandatory to segregate waste at the source. If it is not done, impose fines on those not segregating waste. Today, there has been a paradigm shift in the manner in which we look at garbage. You cannot simply throw it on the streets and you cannot simply dump it in landfills. There has to be a system in place,” she said.
Through this effort, the NGOs want to first convince the BBMP of the benefits of segregating waste and how it is the solution to proper waste management. For this, they had engineers, contractors and pourakarmikas at the demonstration. After a similar demonstration on Monday, those involved, plan to give a presentation to the commissioner of BBMP and convince him to institutionalise segregation at the source.
“The citizens too need to be made aware of segregation. However, that is looking forward. We will start with the BBMP and once, hopefully, it is institutionalised we will work with people on segregating waste,” she said.
On Monday, the demonstrations will be held at Bellandur, HSR Layout, Koramangala, RT Nagar, Sanjay Nagar and Ulsoor.
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