The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is set to convert two new quarry pits at Mittaganahalli and Bagalur into landfills to dump waste generated by citizens. The quarry landfill at Mittaganahalli, where over 2,000 tonnes of mixed waste is currently being dumped every day from the past year and a half, is almost full.

“We have issued a tender to develop the Bagalur quarry, less than a kilometre away from Mittaganahalli into a scientific landfill, which the government is yet to approve. This will take nearly three months to be developed and made ready. In the interim, we have prepared a small quarry pit at Mittaganahalli itself to dump the waste and it can sustain us for six months,” said Sarfaraz Khan, Joint Commissioner, Solid Waste Management, BBMP.

Solid waste management activists are unhappy with the development as the city administration has adopted a no-landfill policy, committed to segregation at source, and sustainable waste processing. “Opening up new landfills over the past four years only indicates the complete failure to implement the policy the city has adopted,” said an SWM activist.

Not functioning

Of the six compost-based waste processing plants, three are not functioning. While Lingadheeranahalli plant has been stuck in litigation at the National Green Tribunal, Seegehalli and Subbarayanapalya plants have been shut down owing to protests by local residents. “Segregation levels in the city have stagnated at around 40% and we are sending nearly 1,200 tonnes of segregated wet waste to the processing plants daily,” Mr. Khan said, adding efforts were on to reopen the three other plants as well.

However, Sandhya Narayan, member of the Technical Advisory Committee, SWM, BBMP, said complacency had set in. “We have not added any waste processing capacity in the city since 2015, neither the large plants nor the decentralised plants. None of the waste-to-energy plants that have been in the pipeline for nearly a decade now, materialised. Many proposals for the biomethanation plants at the ward level have not been accorded approval,” she said, adding there was no serious push to increase the levels of segregation at source as well.