After having tried composting at home, N Manjunatha Prasad, Commissioner, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), has now directed all zonal joint commissioners to train BBMP officials on segregation and home composting.

He said that this was being done to spread the word to people and officials on the importance of composting. On March 15, Bommanahalli joint commissioner Veerabhadraswamy, senior engineer Suguna, members of Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT) and volunteers from HSR Citizens Forum organised a training session on segregation and home composting to all health inspectors, assistant engineers and assistant executive engineers of the engineering and revenue departments.

Veerabhadraswamy said that every day, he gets many calls on the garbage menace.
He explained that unless the BBMP staff set an example of being responsible for their waste, all the preaching would fall on deaf ears.

 Dr Shanthi Tummala, SWMRT member urged the team to impress upon people the need for segregating their waste at home. The ‘ 2bin1bag’  method of three-way segregation, as mandated by the High Court, and the importance of colour coding were explained.

Vani Murthy, another SWMRT member took the team through the simplest method of aerobic composting using an aerated container and dry leaves. She called upon people to consider every dry leaf falling from the tree as money. “These dry leaves can give us black gold to grow our own nutritious food whose worth cannot be measured in money,” she said.

Health inspectors spoke about how they had seen composting  as children in villages, but had never thought about it in urban areas.