Are ‘unscientific’ landfills the only way to manage Bengaluru city’s massive mountains of solid waste? In the frantic, decades-long struggle to deal with this mammoth issue, why has the focus shifted completely away from waste processing? As more quarries are identified as landfills, the search for a sustainable long-term solid waste management plan has hit rock bottom.
The clarity is clearly missing. The State-owned Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Limited (BSWML) recently floated a tender to set up two landfill sites in the city, one near Bagalur and another in Kada Agrahara in Mahadevapura. It also proposed to develop two existing ones for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).
This came just weeks after Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar announced that all waste processing plants and landfills would be shifted out of the city soon. The waste, he declared, would go straight to Integrated Solid Waste Management Parks to be set up in 100-acre plots located far away from the city.
