The city has just made it through another garbage crisis with the government persuading Mandur residents to allow the waste from Bangalore to be dumped at the landfill there till November 30.
The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), however, has come out with other ways to reduce the waste reaching landfills.
The premier B-school, along with the Centre for Sustainable Development (CSD), conducted a study on ‘Primary collection of solid waste management in Bangalore’.
The research paper, headed by Gopal Naik, Chairperson, Centre for Excellence in Urban Governnance, IIMB, points to the quantum of waste produced in the city, as well as the system of waste collection. While pointing out the failure of the segregation of waste model, the paper says wherever individual households or commercial establishments are segregating, there is no formal system of collecting the waste in a segregated manner and disposing it in the same way so that minimum waste reaches the disposal sites.
Apart from not having standardised systems of collection across wards (primary collection, street sweeping and secondary collection), the study says that around 70 per cent of the city’s solid waste management is handled by private contractors. “The mode of payment to the contractors is based on quantity of waste brought to the landfill. This acts as a disincentive towards waste segregation and waste reduction,” the paper says.
The paper has made suggestions such as making segregation at source a mandatory responsibility of the generator by empowering pourakarmikas to refuse mixed waste or charge for it; fixing responsibility on those who miss the door-to-door collection to drop the waste (on-charge basis) at the Clean Bangalore Centre (CBC), and doing away with contract to transport mixed waste.
