BBMP door-to-door collection
I recently got to know that BBMP has a door-to-door collection philosophy of garbage collection. Apparently, you are not allowed to take your garbage to some location. Well, there is no location. And the BBMP collection people are supposed to take the garbage to a road corner (yes, I said road corner). From here small auto type vehicles showel in the garbage and take it to another road corner (yes, I said road corner again), from where the big garbage trucks haul it to, I dont know where - most likely a landfill. Now two questions might have popped into your mind. Why road corners? And where is this waste segregation falling in this 'methodology'?
It is road corners because, these centralized places where garbage is collected and moved into vehicles/bigger vehicles do not have waste bins. They are literally dumped on the road. So see, folks see this. For those places where the BBMP people do not go (yes, this collection does not happen everywhere), folks come and dump their garbage 'near' the centralized collection points. This makes these collection points larger and wider, and makes the area 'very fragrant' too.
Regarding waste segregation, there is none. The garbage that I mention above is 'unified' garbage. And even if you segregate and give, they take and dump it together in the same place.
I agree that, we should not be blaming it on the corporation (BBMP in this case). I also hear that several apartment complexes are doing their bit by trying to compost and segregate recyclable waste. And sure, I encourage as many apartments do it. But, is it not one of the civic responsibilities of the corporation to do this for us. I read somewhere that effective roads, water supply, and garbage management are the three main functions of any city corporation. Roads are written off. Water supply is off and on. And if we are expected to take care of garbage management also, so what IS the corporation doing?
My four year old son made a comment today saying, "Appa, all these cows, and stray dogs, and all other animals are in the middle of the road, only because of all this garbage on the road. When will all this garbage go away?". If a four year old is distressed seeing this, I can only imagine.
This last picture is something that strikes my heart. I live less than 250m from this place. This 'place' appears right across the road to the Koramangala Regional Passport Office - you can see the building in the backdrop. I see this happening day in and day out. There is a residential layout on this side of the road. BBMP does not go in to collect garbage there. So what alternative do they have. They do not have a garbage bin anywhere. This is also a 'garbage' transfer point. So the entire layout dumps their garbage here. And the 'transfer' does not happen regularly either. There are cows eating that garbage all the time. That is just plain wrong.
In comparison, let us look at Chennai. It may not be perfect, but the methodology is perfect, in my opinion. There are bins on each roads. Folks are expected to come and drop their house's garbage into the bins. There is garbage truck that has an automated mechanism to pick up the bin an dump the garbage into the truck. Bin is empty. Road is clean. I have not really seen mounds of garbage on the road anywhere in Chennai - atleast the places I have been to.
The same methodology is followed in the NCR region as well - I have seen this in Noida. And oh, this is exactly the system followed in the US too. And hm, I think all over the world too. It provides a balanced civic responsibility. Citizens are expected to put the garbage into the bins. The corporation is expected to clear the bins. You keep your side of the bargain, while I keep mine. Seems fair to me. This may not be perfect everywhere in Chennai. Sure there are overflowing bins. But there are bins. Atleast the methodology is in place.
So who is the brilliant mind who suggested this funda of the Bangalore corporation coming door to door and picking up the garbage. Even to a novice planner, this seems a non-scalable solution.