The New Indian Express 18.10.2010
Coming together for a clean cause
BANGALORE: A group of 11 organisations are working towards easing the everincreasing load of garbage in the city.Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT), a conglomerate of like minded organisations, have been training households, apartment complexes and educational institutions for the past one year. With the intention of launching a communityfocused accreditation scheme, they have been training various sections of the society to encourage and more efficiently carry out garbage segregation at the source itself.
"We have converted over 10,000 households," a spokesperson of SWMRT said. She told Express that they regularly conducted workshops in apartment complexes and other households to encourage segregation. "We work in different areas of the city," she said and added that their teams stressed on the importance of segregation and recycling. She said that training and interactive programmes were being held to involve children also in the programme. Acknowledging the support by BBMP, she said that they were making all efforts to coordinate their interests in making the city free of garbage problems.
The city produces more than 3,000 metric tonnes of garbage and this amount is increasing with the increase in population. There are currently four dumping yards in the city and there are surveys being conducted to get more dumping and segregation units. There are also proposals to set up a recycling unit in KR Market itself as the market alone produces about 30 to 40 tonnes of waste. They have also started pilot projects to make many areas in the city 'zero garbage zones" which would later be extended to the entire city.
