Sobha Althea-Azalea: Mandur crisis affects us, but just a little

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Giving back to where it belongs: All the kitchen waste and garden waste is turned into rich organic manure and given back to where it belongs.

Giving back to where it belongs: All the kitchen waste and garden waste is turned into rich organic manure and given back to where it belongs.

Going by the media reports, the Karnataka government certainly doesn’t have a solution in sight for the Mandur landfill crisis. No government wants to drag a reluctant multitude towards a safe future by roiling up the system and suffer the drubbing during elections. Better safe than sorry, right?

Amidst such a sordid state of affairs, I feel immensely proud to congratulate the residents of Sobha Althea-Azalea, Yelahanka, for achieving multiple milestones in just two years. Continue reading →

Mandur landfill crisis revisits: Luxury of peacetime over, let’s stop being deliberately callous

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The reality in Mandur. (Pic: The Hindu)

The reality in Mandur. (Pic: The Hindu)

Recently, I made an early-morning trip to some nurseries around Lalbagh with a friend to buy plants for our apartment garden. By forenoon, we had done most of our work but couldn’t resist the desire to step into yet another large nursery studded with beautiful succulents. As we went around enjoying the fragrance of those green little beauties, especially gardenias, the nursery staff got busy loading the green ‘waste’ into a BBMP vehicle. Some 4-5 workers went on feeding the truck for at least an hour.

When we asked, they said it was headed to Mandur landfill. Continue reading →

Saving sparrows: Dilawar’s nest box initiative has come a long way

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dilawarWhen I wrote about Sparrow Man Mohammed Dilawar in August 2010 for India Together, I did not know I would take his message out of my balcony with ample support and enthusiasm from fellow-residents at my apartment complex. Thanks to these bunch of bird-lovers, our small-scale initiative has been kicked off. We are excited and are about to install the nest boxes bought from Dilawar on our premises. Hope our dreams come true!

Here goes the story on Dilawar, his commitment and perseverence… Continue reading →

We manage 21 types of waste in Sobha Althea-Azalea, every day…

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How would you feel if a housekeeper trained by you gives back lessons on how to differentiate between many types of plastic waste?

This is what happened a week ago when I went down to the basement to check if things were in order. This is where secondary segregation of our dry waste collected from each household happens every day.

When I asked Lakshmi, our housekeeper, why plastic waste was lying in 3-4 separate bins, she said type A fetches more money than type B… She and the remaining 11 housekeepers know it better than perhaps I will ever know.

The result? We are segregating TWENTYONE types of waste every day at Sobha Althea-Azalea! Continue reading →

Bangalore’s garbage explosion: Segregation at source is the only solution

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Recycle-get this...

Everything is garbage until it is segregated. However, despite a never-before crisis staring it in its face, the government doesn’t seem to have realised that there can be answers to what seem to be gigantic problems. As for the one that has pushed Bangalore and of course, surrounding villages like Mandur and Mavallipura over the edge, the answer is simple: The problem has to end where it begins. Continue reading →