Bangalore drowning in trash

By Mattia Michielan

Garbage, waste and scrap are the meat and potatoes of Bangalore’s news. With the rapid expansion of the city and its population, waste management is now a problem that needs a solution fast. The municipal government has spent tens of millions of rupees dumping the material the city discards in the villages surrounding it. Waste management is a global problem, and Bangalore should learn from the example of other developed cities that are slowly solving this problem with a combination of strict legislation and education of their citizens.

The 5.5 million Bangaloreans and the 2,000 industries that the IT hub hosts produce about 3,000 tons of waste daily. Bangalore’s municipal corporation, the  Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) collects the trash, which is dumped in landfills on the outskirts of the city, including in the Mavallipuram, Annekal, Bannerghatta, Bommanahalli and Kannahalli districts.

A landfill should have impermeable ground and a proper ventilation system to avoid problems related to the gas and the smell produced by the waste.

KSV Nair, vice president of waste-management firm Ramky Energy and Environment Ltd., said the BBMP should segregate the organic waste before the trash is dumped in landfills. An example of the problems that can result if this is not done can be seen in Mavallipura, where trash has been dumped since 2003 in land not suitable for that purpose. Today, the entire area is highly polluted, and many people have died as a result of this pollution. A recent victim was 15-year-old Akshay Kumar, who died of dengue, having been infected by one of the millions of mosquitoes that breed in Mavallipura’s fetid dumps.

“There are so many problems with plastic thrown carelessly in open fields,” said Nagesh Hedge, an environmentalist. “If a little amount of water collects there, mosquitoes will breed and spread diseases like dengue and malaria.”

Nongovernmental organization Environment Support Group (ESG) is studying how potable underground water is contaminated by the polluted water that leaches from the dumped waste.  Villagers drinking this water using it to water their crops suffer from diarrhea.

Discarded plastic food and drink containers that are eaten by cows, meanwhile, release toxins that go into the milk consumed by humans, Hegde said.

ESG’s Nandini, pointed out another health risk caused by trash: Villagers suffer respiratory diseases including bronchitis when dumped trash is burned.

San Francisco sets zero waste goal

The Centro Riciclo di Vedelago had improved the efficiency of its recycling process from 87 percent in 2003 to almost 95 percent by 2008.

San Francisco is considered to be the city with the best waste-management program in the United States and has set a goal of generating “zero waste.”

The system adopted in the city under the same name is really simple: Organic food goes to a composting system and all recyclable materials—paper, glass, plastic and metal—are recycled and sold to manufacturers that transform the discarded items into raw materials for new products.

According to the city’s mandatory recycling and composting ordinance all San Francisco residents must separate recyclables, compostable and landfill trash. Steep fines are set for violators.

San Francisco’s Environment Department is staffed by environmental professionals dedicated to spreading awareness about waste management among residents and businesses. One of the achievements made by SF Environment was to make possible that “thousands of resident and over 3,000 restaurants and other business send over 400 tons of food scraps and other compostable material each day to Recology’s Jepson-Prairie composting facility.”

San Francisco’s practice of segregating recyclable and dry trash from organic waste cuts by one-third the waste sent to landfills. The organic waste is turned into nutrient-rich soil used in organic farming and wine production, one of San Francisco’s specialties.

San Francisco recovers 77 percent of the waste it produces and through stricter legislation increasing producer and consumer responsibility for the materials discarded it aims to reach the goal of zero waste by 2020.

For further information watch this video.

Japan sets strict rules for waste disposal

“In Japan, the waste is very carefully segregated into three main types: burnable garbage—food and paper packaging—nonburnable garbage—mainly plastic—and cans and bottles,” said Mark Austin, a journalist working in Bangalore who is a permanent resident of Japan. He explained that there is a fixed schedule for the removal everyday trash as well as so-called sodai gomi (big garbage), refrigerators, televisions and other electrical items, and toxic waste such as batteries.

This symbol is used in Japan to identify recyclable material.

Austin, who has spent 20 years in Japan, said he “feels terrible” about dropping all his garbage in one bin living in India. In Japan, garbage has acquired a value, he pointed out, mentioning how an old man in the housing estate outside Tokyo where he lived used to collect discarded aluminum cans in a huge box on the back of his bicycle each night, and how local governments in Japan went to court to claim ownership of discarded newspapers and magazines they said were being “stolen” for resale as recyclable material.

In Furano, in Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, there is a house built entirely with waste material. In Japan, both citizens and the government have discovered the economic value of garbage.   

Turning waste into gold

“Recycle, recover, reduction and reuse” are the keywords for the Centro Riciclo Vedelago (CRV) in Italy.  After three years of research in collaboration with the University of Padova, this private enterprise is now able to recycle almost all material it handles.

CRV owner Carla Poli said the aim of the firm is to transform the waste produced by industry and households into new resources that can be used by industry in the production of new goods.  In the last year, the firm has used new technology to improve the quality of the recycled material it produces. CRV now recycles 99 percent of the trash it receives. 

Fermenting food causes waste to stink.“The key stage is the separation of organic waste from the other,” said Poli said. “Otherwise the waste cannot be recycled.”

It is for that reason that the first step of the project takes place at the grassroots level: In schools and public places people are encouraged to dispose of organic waste in color-coded bins.

Once it arrives in the factory, the waste is put on conveyor belts that bring it to the first machine. Using a technology developed at the University of Padova the trash is divided into different materials with an accuracy of 98 percent. The output is washed and sold to be used as resources to make new products.  

“With the last machine, made in 2009, it is possible to transform the output of the first phase of recycling into plastic granules that we sell to plastic and building industries,” Poli said.

This plastic sand can be used to make bottles, chairs and other plastic objects, but in the last few years, applying a method developed by the University of Padova, it has been mixed with cement to make bricks. Plastic sand is lighter, lasts longer and has better thermo-isolation.

With an investment of €50,000 (Rs.300 million) this firm is recycling the waste of 1.3 million people. The income comes from industry, which has to pay a fee of €90 (Rs.5,600) to CRV per ton of trash (the bill from incinerators, by comparison, was €280 or Rs.16,800 per ton) and from selling the material recycled. The firm benefits from tax breaks because it operates in an environmentally friendly way.

The South Korean government has ordered three recycling machines from CRV and Germany, Holland and Switzerland are also in the queue. “Don’t call it waste,” Poli said. “If you call it plastic it seems different, doesn’t it?”

Garden City finally going green

The BBMP is now trying to educate households to “segregate at source.” Following the example of San Francisco the corporation is planning to provide 100 houses with a blue dustbin for organic waste and a yellow one for dry waste.
Between 1998 and 2000 a Bangalorean firm began asphalting streets with a mixture of waste-plastic and bitumen. After receiving a grant from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, the firm was able to carry out more research and in 2002 the BBMP contracted it to build 230 kilometers of city roads.

According to a study by Dr. S. Verma, assistant professor in the Physics Department at Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology in Punjab: “Roads laid with plastic waste mix are found to be better than the conventional ones. The binding property of plastic makes the road last longer besides giving added strength to withstand more loads.”

Mr. Siddaiah, a BBMP commissioner, said that plastic bags will soon be banned in Bangalore, a move he says will cut waste by 40 percent.

Recently, Bangalore saw the opening in K.R. Puram of a new power plant that will generate electricity from organic waste.

The plant will produce biogas from organic material like food waste or cow dung, which will be accumulated in a tank where, by fermentation, will produce bio-methane that will be piped though tubes into a generator.

A few supermarkets have opted to provide paper bags to their customers or sell them jute ones. But a ban on plastic bags will take time and a good plan because about 100,000 people are employed in the plastic sector in Karnataka.

The problem of waste management is a challenging one for all countries. The Indian government should look at the waste management system of other countries for ideas and information and provide more incentives to local students and engineers to test and develop new technologies to manage waste.