Bengaluru: In four weeks from now, Bengaluru is going to be back in a garbage crisis. The Mitiganahalli landfill is 90 per cent full, and the BBMP’s rubbish trucks are lining up in serpentine queues awaiting their turn to unload their cargo.
Consequently, the whole process is backing up, and garbage collection has taken a beating in many localities.
The situation is not new to Bengaluru of course. The problem really is that two solutions proposed when the city last stared into the abyss have both been non-starters.
First, waste segregation has not really taken off. Of the 4,500 tonnes of garbage Bengaluru generates per day, just 30 per cent is segregated into wet and dry waste. So the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) collects mixed waste and dumps it in the Mitiganahalli quarry.
More than 2,000 tonnes of mixed waste ends up in the Mitiganahalli quarry. This is shortly going to be filled to capacity in four weeks, and BBMP has no alternative landfill lined up.
So circa February 3, BBMP can expect to wake up and smell the coffee.
The municipality had earlier floated a tender a set up a scientific landfill at Mitiganahalli and found a contractor too. But the Urban Development Department rejected the tender because the contractor was not qualified.
Solid waste management experts have been repeatedly asking BBMP to take steps to improve segregation at source so that wet waste can be diverted to composting plants, thus reducing the burden on the quarry.
An official in the BBMP's solid waste management wing told Deccan Chronicle that steps are being taken to float another tender. “Also we are planning to set up composting plants in all 198 wards of the city, of which 10 will start running from the first week of February,” the official said.
