SwachaGraha Compost Connect kicked off, biomass sent back to the soil

Solid Waste Management Round Table’s SwachaGraha Compost Connect (SGCC) campaign was officially kicked off today with two farmers picking up a tractor-load of kitchen waste compost from Sobha Althea-Azalea, Yelahanka, Bengaluru. There are still many more heaps of compost to be loaded up.

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Does your community produce excess compost? Join SwachaGraha Compost Connect campaign

Farmers located on the outskirts of the city meet members of Solid Waste Management Round Table to discuss Swachagraha Compost Connect campaign in Bengaluru on December 4.

Sometimes, things take longer than you think they will. And then, they happen faster than you thought they could.

SwachaGraha Compost Connect (SGCC) is one such dream project conceived by Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT), Bengaluru, that will work towards connecting urban compost producers with rural farming community with the sole intention of sending the precious organic waste coming out of our kitchens and gardens back to the soil in the form of compost. Continue reading

A big win for Bangalore’s green activists at HC; 2Bin1Bag, waste-pickers rule the roost

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(L to R) Ex-cricketer Rahul Dravid joins the 2Bin1Bag campaign, saying, “it makes the job of segregation easy”. This is how full of smiles all the waste-pickers were at Hasiru Dala today.

The Year 2015 couldn’t have ended better!

In what can be termed a holistic and humane judgment, the Karnataka High Court today directed the city of Bangalore to adopt a three-tier, colour-coded segregation and gave the first right to recyclables to waste-pickers. The segregation at source rule applies to all—individual homes, bulk generators, commercial establishments, government offices, Railway, Defence, etc. Continue reading

The journey of tissue paper from your home to…

"These bags are full of tissue papers," says this ITC employee who picks up the load from various destinations and brings it to the DWCC.

“These bags are full of tissue papers,” says this ITC employee who picks up the load from various destinations and brings it to one of the dry waste collection centres in Yelahanka.

Did you know the tissue papers that you threw into your dustbin can travel miles and get processed and recycled all over again?

Before you get to know the final avatar it assumes, let me make it clear that I am referring to only segregated, unsoiled tissue paper which is not contaminated beyond remedy. Continue reading

Swachh Kolar 3: How wet waste is composted, dry waste recycled & sanitary waste incinerated

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Kolar CMC AE Kotreshappa Benni at one of the composting yards in Kolar.

If you have read the previous posts, I guess you will agree with me on this point: Frugality doesn’t necessarily mean lack of efficiency. Conversely, systemic efficiency doesn’t always come with huge spending or foreign technology. Most often, our hunt for solutions leads to divorcing ourselves from the local context and blindly adopting foreign methodologies which often fail to fit into our backyard.

If Kolar has succeeded in becoming a self-sustaining city, that’s mainly because it has evolved contextually by effectively utilising its human workforce and certain quintessentially local and time-tested techniques.

Here’s an account of how the district administration deals with each stream of segregated waste. Continue reading

Adopt 2b1b, segregate at home, says Dr B Jayashree

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Dr B Jayashree with two bins and one bag.

Being a versatile personality that lends dignity to any role she plays, any song she hums and any movie she acts in, Dr B Jayashree has been donning the role of an eco-campaigner to save Bengaluru from going to the brink. And that, as one can imagine, she does with aplomb. Continue reading