Bangalore is talking trash these days. It has gone so far as to even hold a ‘recycling habba' (`habba' means festival in Kannada) this fortnight.
Do you want to see what happens to the garbage that is thrown out so casually? Join an eye-opening journey on one of the three days from the origin of garbage at our doorsteps to the city dump on ‘Trash Trail'. To know what all can be done with junk, check out designer Jerry Pinto's ‘Alternate Current', a travelling exhibition of lamps and fashion accessories made from waste material, or the ‘Kitchen and recycling mela' at the Mantri Square mall; or the Recyclathon fun contest for students and companies. Or an industry-targeted panel discussion on corporate responsibility in checking waste generation. At the end of it, there are prizes for those to save the largest amount of waste.
These are among a host of events being held to mark the first of the yearly ‘garbage' festivals that is going on from November 1-14.
A concerned set of agencies and people has roped in the State Pollution control Board; the civic body, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike; and the Karnataka High Court Legal Services Committee to push Bangaloreans into consciously practising the three Rs - reduce waste, reuse and recycle it. The dirt track is also on Facebook and Twitter.
Now BBMP says it plans to start biomethanisation plants to generate power from vegetable waste; plants that can process 10 tonnes of plastic each day into crude oil; and allot Rs 25 lakh to each ward to start collection centres for dry waste.
According to the Solid Waste Management Round Table Bengaluru, the driver behind the habba, all the waste is dumped and not managed; it is one of the factors that pollute the environment, soil, ground water and farm products. “Just a simple change in mindset can curtail and drastically reduce the amount of garbage that needlessly makes its way into landfills or worse still, on to the city's streets.”
At Monday's panel discussion on `Extended producer responsibility,' speakers were concerned about lack of implementation of rules to regulate and reduce waste.
For example, the country has a take-back policy for expired batteries but the compliance rate of the Battery (Manufacturing and Handling) Rules is barely 24-30 per cent.
The solid waste management group, backed by the Anonymous Indian Charitable Trust, promotes good waste recycling and disposal practices in homes, apartments, offices, educational institutions and companies across the city.
The round table or SWMRT says that in two years, it has introduced 25,000 homes to segregation, recycling, and composting; this has saved dumping of about 650 tonnes of waste into landfills. Dozens of rag-pickers have been given ID cards.
JUNK FACTS
3,500 tonnes: The garbage that Bangalore generates daily
Rs 402 crore: Spent in a year on transporting trash to dumps
25,000: The number of rag-pickers in the city
Keywords: recycling habba,
