With a growing population, the quantity of waste is constantly increasing in cities. Managing suitable solid waste systems with limited local bodies resources and infrastructure is a great challenge to the city and for citizens who expect a predictable quality of service.
Unlike other civic issues, proper solid waste management requires appropriate policy, sustainable processing, citizen’s participation, robust officials open to new methods, and good leadership of elected representatives. Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is one of the urban local bodies that has all the ingredients to make it work.
Kokila is working at a composting facility. With her expert knowledge on the methodology, processes and materials, Kokila is our “composting doctor” and subject matter expert.
Challenges
There is no such thing as throw “away”.
As landfills are being overburdened, and water sources are being clogged, our goal is to process garbage that is created within wards in those areas.
Getting all our stakeholders to agree on a strategy of decentralising the processing is long drawn and challenging.
In order to do this, we need better communication between stakeholders to help:
- Identifying appropriate places within the ward to process the waste and develop a process at the ward level to process waste.
- Finding appropriate technologies to process wet waste that will be within the budget allocated by the local government.
Our Approach
Hasiru Dala has launched a Zero Waste initiative that focuses on segregation at source in three ways: intense citizen engagement, decentralised waste processing, and integrating waste pickers formally into the waste management process. The aim is to reduce waste that goes out of the ward (an administrative block) for processing. Zero waste initiatives have begun in Bengaluru, and will soon be launched in Mysuru and Tumakuru.
We engage with the officials and elected representatives to agree to a zero waste ward. This is becoming easier as the ecosystem for local, decentralised solutions is becoming more accepted and the present policy of most cities also promote decentralisation of waste processing.
We also engage citizens to help them understand the zero-waste process; seeking active participation of citizens to segregate at source, waste reduction at a personal level, and composting at home. We try and engage children through Trashonomics – a method of inspiring children to learn about solid waste management.
Working with citizens and officials for streamlining the collection, integrating waste pickers in operating Dry Waste Collection, and keeping the data of all segregated waste will help the community understand the positive impact of the efforts of all stakeholders. We encourage all those involved to recognize the contribution of sanitation workers among the citizens.
We hope to institutionalise the whole process so when Hasiru Dala withdraws, the process of zero waste continues through community ownership.
Case Study
Ward 177, J.P. Nagar is a ward in Bengaluru South. We initiated the zero-waste ward with the invitation of the Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA- elected representative for the State government) with her interest in the environment issue and specifically on sustainable waste management. And almost a year later –
- A women’s group WoW got involved and engaged in composting of their wet waste in their lane. A lane composter which can compost an average of 25 kgs of organic waste/day from 70 HHs was installed, to be managed by Pourakarmikas (sanitation workers) of that street and supervised by the members of WoW. In the first batch, 365 kilos of compost were harvested. The lane composter was sponsored by Hasiru Dala.
- Segregation of waste at home has increased to 90%
- Citizens have formed groups to address civic issues not just waste but working on air pollution etc.
- Children are more engaged and aware of waste reduction, segregation and composting.
- Cleaning up drive after the segregation is achieved in the lane and collection of waste is streamlined.
- other civic organisations – India & abroad have visited the ward to learn and adapt it.
- Student groups from Abroad have also visited the ward.
- In days to come we are expanding to another ward ( 44) and eventually to a total of 5 wards by 2021
