Deccan Herald               04.06.2013

Bangaloreans poor at waste separation

Not many Bangaloreans are willing to spend a
few minutes at home to separate kitchen waste from other household
wastes, even though they know perfectly well that waste separation at
home actually helps in better waste management, which continues to be a
problem area for India’s IT capital.

With municipal
solid waste management posing a big problem in Bangalore, 69 per cent of
respondents participating in a six-city environment survey felt poor
waste management would have adverse impact on human health.

Even
though half of the people interviewed in the survey suggested
segregation of the waste at source for proper disposal, not many are
willing to do so at their home.

Only 11 per cent of people showed
“high willingness” to segregate municipal waste and another 12 per cent
showed “willingness” for the same.

A large number of respondents
from the age group of 35–44 years (almost 50 per cent) said they were
unwilling to segregate their waste at all.

Carried out by the
Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the environment survey 2013
capture citizen’s perception on local environment in six cities –
Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai.

The
survey was based on interviewing 4,039 people from these cities, out of
which 401 — almost 10 per cent of total population — are from
Bangalore who were randomly picked up from different education, earning
and livelihood background. It was released in the capital on Monday.

As
for the reasons for their unwillingness for waste separation, 34 per
cent consider separating the wastes to be a cumbersome task, 31 per cent
feel they will need more space to keep the two separate bins, and 23
per cent consider segregation to be the responsibility of the local
authority.

There is also a small percentage of respondents (11
per cent) that feels even if they segregate the wastes; it is not
collected separately by the civic authorities.

“After
segregating the waste, if the municipal authorities mix the same and
dump both at landfill sites, then why to separate them at all,” wondered
environmentalist Ravi Agarwal from Toxics Link, which was not a party
to the TERI study.

However, among those respondents who have
regular salaried jobs in the private sector, a very small percentage
(less than 5 per cent) consider it to be a cumbersome task. They mostly
think that the space constraint for segregation is the limiting factor

In
the last five years, the survey notes, Bangalore has lost a large
portion of its tree cover, bird presence and ground water availability.

The
garbage dumping and collection had deteriorated in the same period and
the quality of the city’s air did not improve, they said.