The Environment Support Ground (ESG) which fought alongside the people of Mavallipura and surrounding villagers against the dumping of waste in their midst in July is now demanding that the BBMP enforce garbage segregation at source to reduce the the quantity required to be disposed of at landfills. Addressing a press conference on Thursday Mr Leo Saldanha of of ESG regretted that within a month of the Karnataka Sate Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) ordering closure of the dumping yards, deputy chief minister R. Ashok was trying to revoke the order and allow the city’s garbage to find its way back to Mavallipura again.
“Unscientific garbage management amounts to contempt of the Supreme Court. If Mr Ashok tries to dump garbage with police security in Mavallipura, the people will file an SC/ST atrocities case against him and BBMP commissioner M. K. Shankarlinge Gowda”, he warned. Mr N. S. Mukunda, president, Citizens’ Action Forum (CAF) said the BBMP must make segregation at source mandatory for all residents and penalise those who don’t fall in line.
"If the garbage is segregated at source, the city will produce just 400 tonnes of waste as against the present outflow of 6,000 metric tonnes everyday to the landfills across the city," he said, regretting that the BBMP’s project to install waste segregators in a few wards had still not taken off. Ms Sandhya Narayanan, member of the Solid Waste Management Round Table said a city like Bengaluru needed a scientific solution for management of its garbage.