The Times of India                 19.10.2010

Wealth from waste, and it's green too

BANGALORE: Over 15,000 households and 180 institutions across Bangalore now segregate garbage at source. An estimated 320 tonnes are also recycled every month... Recycling paper alone has mitigated 4,633 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission, equivalent to planting 18,532 trees, and neutralized the negative impact of climate change on 2,895 average Indians.

This was some good news from the year-long Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT) shared here on Tuesday. SWMRT had also commissioned climate change experts no2co2.in to calculate the annual amount of carbon dioxide emission prevented by recycling domestic waste.

Leading the success stories is Diamond District which now earns Rs 15,000 as average monthly income from recycling waste. About 900 households here regularly segregate wet and dry waste. Over 3.8 tonnes of dry waste is recycled here monthly.

Same with Platinum City where 700 apartment units now segregate waste and 20 of its residents spread awareness to all. The complex has been earning between Rs 10,000 and Rs 12,000 from dry waste over the past two months. Two streets in Sadashivanagar are also involved in dry waste collection.

"BBMP has allotted us four spaces where we collect dry waste. Over the past year, on an average, 320 tonnes of dry waste has been collected per month and recycled. This is just 10% of the city's garbage. We need to spread awareness," Dr Meenakshi Bharath told TOI. These statistics will also be shared with BBMP at SWMRT's second presentation at the Lok Adalat on October 23.