Villagers bear the brunt of Bengaluru city dwellers' crap

Credit: Darshak Ithikkat

Credit: Tejas Dayanand Sagar

Credit: Tejas Dayanand Sagar

By Kapil Kajal

With a population of over one crore, Bengaluru generates more than 6,000 tonnes of waste per day, or 20 lakh tonnes each year. The residents of Bengaluru get away with their waste as the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) auto tippers collect the waste at regular intervals. However, the residents of the neighbouring villages—Mandur, Mavallipura, Bellahalli—are forced to live with the foul smell of waste that Bengalureans created.

Sillavali N, a resident of Mandur village, stated that their village was extremely beautiful but in 2007, the BBMP chose the place as a landfill site and now they have to bear the smell of waste. Hundreds of truck dump the waste in the area every day and it’s attracting diseases, he added.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) recommended that the waste should be kept at a barren land without any contact with the local residents. The waste not only occupies a large space but is also a breeding ground for pathogens, flies, malodours and generation of leachate, which contribute to the generation of greenhouse gases and pose a risk of fire.

According to the guidelines for maintaining a waste processing and disposal facility, a landfill site should be at least 500 metres from a notified inhabited area and the zone of 500 metres around a landfill boundary should be declared as a ‘No-Development Buffer Zone’ after the landfill location is finalised.

The CPCB also calculated environmental concern by decomposing garbage near the buffer zone area for the guidelines and the major concern was methane. Methane is a by-product of the anaerobic respiration of bacteria, and these bacteria thrive in landfills with high amounts of moisture and methane concentrations can reach up to 50% of the composition of landfill gas at maximum anaerobic decomposition, stated CPCB guidelines.

In 2014, even the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) had stated that the existing BBMP landfill sites are inside the buffer zones in Bengaluru and there are complaints about the smell, birds and nuisance faced by the people of those areas.

The KSPCB had further directed the BBMP that the existing and future landfill sites should not be within the buffer zone but the BBMP did not take any steps for this.

A World Bank study said that over 90% of waste is often disposed in unregulated dumps or openly burned in countries like India and these practices create serious health, safety, and environmental consequences because poorly managed waste serves as a breeding ground for disease vectors, adds air pollution through methane generation, and can even promote urban violence as laundry machines, refrigerators, air conditioners and tree stumps could be used to block roads, and glass bottles could be used as weapons.

Prof. Nandini N, the chairperson and professor with the Department of Environmental Sciences, Bangalore University, stated that the garbage sites increase the presence of the microorganisms like E. coli and Fecal streptococci (bio-aerosols), and these are carried by air to the people living near landfill sites.

Exposure to bioaerosols could lead to infectious diseases which arise from viruses, bacteria, fungi, asthma, allergic rhinitis and cancer, she added.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the poor management of healthcare waste potentially exposes health care workers, waste handlers, patients and the community to infection, it is essential that all medical waste materials are segregated at the point of generation, appropriately treated and disposed of safely.

Dr H Paramesh, a paediatric pulmonologist with the Lakeside Center for Health Promotion, highlighted that exposure to pollutants such as methane, nitrogen, carbon, particulate matter and dioxins—arising out of landfills—can cause respiratory problems like asthma, skin and bladder cancer, and cause reproductive and developmental problems.

A WHO study stated that the strategies for waste reduction, separation, processing, management and recycling and reuse are feasible, low-cost alternatives to the open incineration of solid waste, which is common now in developing cities. Improved collection, management and disposal of urban waste is one important strategy that can yield multiple improvements in both climate and health and using anaerobic digestion, methane emissions can be captured from sewage, livestock manure, and landfill solid waste, and used as biogas or bio-methane, fuel for cooking, heating or power needs, the study added.

Dr Yellapa Reddy, the Governing Council Member of the Foundation for Ecological Security of India, mentioned that the major problem is waste generation. He advised minimum use of plastic and non-biodegradable things which increase the waste and also the delivery companies should also turn their packaging biodegradable.

He pointed out that waste should be segregated as per the directions by the Supreme Court and the civic body should segregate the waste.

(Author is Bengaluru - based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.)