With dry waste collection centres almost ready in all the 198 wards in the city, the Karnataka High Court on Friday told Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) that it is time to enforce waste segregation rule among citizens, and impose penalty on violators. But before that, BBMP has to educate citizens and create awareness on segregation of waste at source using various mediums, including print and electronic media.
A Division Bench comprising Justice N. Kumar and Justice B.V. Nagarathna issued the direction while hearing the PIL petitions on solid waste management issues in city, which the Bench has been monitoring from the past two years.
Though segregation of waste at source was made mandatory from October 2012 following a court direction, the rule could not be enforced as facilities were not in place to process dry and wet waste separately, and two types of wastes were mixed by the door-to-door waste collectors even though some households were segregating them.
ADVERTISEMENT
Following this, the court gave several directions to BBMP to set up dry waste collection centres in each of the 198 wards and at least one wet waste processing centre in each of the 28 Assembly constituencies.
BBMP’s Special Commissioner (Solid Waste Management) Darpan Jain told the Bench that dry waste collection centres are ready in all the 198 wards, and that only a few are yet to be made operational. Following this, the Bench said that now the households and all establishments should be made to follow the norm of segregation.