The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) ambitious Zero Garbage project, which was to have begun in 30 wards from Monday, will be taken up only in 12 wards.
The project will be launched by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah at National College grounds in Basavanagudi.
BBMP Commissioner M. Lakshminarayan told The Hindu on Sunday that the BBMP had entered into a tie-up with the Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) in these wards.
The project would be taken up in the remaining wards shortly.
“We cannot take up the project in all the wards at once. For it to become a success, the citizens must first segregate waste at source,” he said.
Push for participation
Towards educating the citizens to segregate waste at source, the BBMP will distribute pamphlets to all the homes in the select wards. The pourakarmikas will inform individual households, while the officials have been instructed to take the residents’ welfare associations into confidence. The BBMP will closely work with self-help groups, non-governmental organisations and ragpickers’ associations.
The civic body has for long been planning the implementation of the zero garbage project. In February, the BBMP announced that the project would be taken up in 50 wards on a pilot basis. This announcement was made during the week-long waste exposition — Wake Up, Clean Up Bengaluru. The former BBMP Commissioner Siddaiah had announced the pilot project would test effective solid waste management practices and that the BBMP would implement it successfully by taking all the stakeholders into confidence. The number of wards was then decreased to 31 and later to 30.
Several experts have noted that segregation of waste at source is the only viable solution to the city’s garbage problem. With the recycling and processing of dry waste — plastic, paper and metal — the quantum of garbage going to the landfills will reduce substantially.
While the BBMP’s plans may seem good on paper, it seems that it will take longer than anticipated for the civic body to actually implement on ground.
