Littering appears to have only increased with the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) making segregation of waste mandatory from October 1. Street corners and vacant sites continue to be the targets of litterbugs who are clearly unwilling to segregate garbage, taking the easy way out instead. Such a scenario contradicts BBMP’s claims of increasing number of citizens complying with its segregation order.
“I tried to reason with my neighbour who refuses to segregate garbage. She dismissed me saying segregation was not her responsibility. Unless citizens wholeheartedly cooperate with the BBMP, I don’t think its plans will see fruition,” said Brinda Tej, a resident of Chennamanakere Achkut.
Reena Shah, who lives on Kanakapura Road, also complained about non-cooperation from her neighbours. She said the pourakarmika’s pleas have been to no avail.
A garbage lorry driver in Subramanyanagar conceded that waste segregation was not as successful as the BBMP claimed. “Hardly 20 per cent of the residents in Subramanyanagar and Gayatrinagar are segregating waste. Littering has also increased.”
An autorickshaw driver, who is also a door-to-door garbage collector, said people continue to throw out mixed waste. “After their road sweeping work, the pourakarmikas have to segregate waste. This can be easily avoided if people spend just a few extra minutes within their homes. Also, ever since segregation became mandatory, I have not received any sanitary waste separately.”
BBMP officials blame the garbage pileup due to “some unforeseen problems” at the Mandur dump yard. Garbage from the city could not be sent there on Monday and Tuesday. “Due to heavy rainfall on Sunday, several lorries could not dump waste at Mandur. There were some skirmishes with the communities around the landfill on Monday, following which there was no dumping till Tuesday night. We resumed dumping on Wednesday night. There is some backlog garbage and this will be cleared in a day or two.”
Bright spot
In such a depressing scenario, there are there are some success stories. For instance, following the door-to-door campaign, nearly five tonnes of wet waste was collected at Garudacharpalya ward and Councillor N. Pillappa took the entire lot for composting to his farm. According to the local environment engineer, Mr. Pillappa has agreed to take all the wet waste generated in his ward.
