While we’re on civic agencies, there has been a lot of talk around Bangalore’s Solid Waste Management (SWM) strategy. For the past decade, two agencies have been in charge of the collection, but now, officials want to go back to just one.
- Story so far: In 2012, the Karnataka High Court made it mandatory to segregate wet waste from dry. For a while, citizens complained that even when they segregated their waste, the collectors would simply dump all the trash in one container. From 2013 onwards, the Dry Waste Collection Centres (DWCCs) collected dry waste twice a week while wet waste was picked up every day by contractors.
For a single agency: According to a senior official, the sheer number of collectors involved is making it difficult to hold anyone accountable. At this point, several agencies are responsible for wet, dry, sanitary and medical waste, construction waste and debris, etc.
The other side: According to SWM experts, a one-size-fits-all approach to a city’s waste collection system simply doesn’t make sense. The separate collection has not only worked for about a decade now, but it has also empowered the ragpickers of Bengaluru.