Former Union Minister M.V. Rajasekharan regretted that Bangalore, touted as the ‘Garden City’, had turned into a ‘Garbage City’ with solid waste management posing a major problem.
Speaking at the World Environment Day programme organised by the Bharatiya Samaja Seva Trust and the Gandhi Smaraka Nidhi here on Thursday, he said the city would be faced with an “environment disaster” if issues such as waste disposal, encroachment of lakes and raja kaluves, depletion of ground water were not seriously addressed.
The population of Bangalore was around one crore, and providing for all the people without harming environment was a challenge, he said. Some countries in the world made it mandatory for any builder to keep a tenth of the area green and such a policy could be adopted in India, said Mr. Rajasekharan.
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H. Srinivasaiah, president, Gandhi Smaraka Nidhi, urged people to shun unfriendly environmental practices in everyday life, such as using large quantities of water to wash cars or to flush toilets.
Christ University was presented with the Environment Protection Awareness Award, 2014 at the event. Several school children were also felicitated for being part of environment protection programmes. ‘Laksha Vriksha Yojane’, a project to plant a lakh trees, was inaugurated.