What’s for breakfast today? Milk, butter, cheese & dioxins

Posted on by
garbage

Buffaloes feeding on the garbage at Mandur landfill.

In one of the most disturbing findings throwing light on the consequences of illegal dumping in open landfills, concentration of dioxins among people and animals living around the landfills has emerged to be the highest in India.

The reason: Dioxins, one of the most dangerous chemical compounds which gets released into the atmosphere when municipal and medical waste gets burnt in open landfills, finds its way into the cows and buffaloes that feed on the hazardous garbage. Continue reading →

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

Posted on by
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

Posted on by
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 →