Are ‘unscientific’ landfills the only way to manage Bengaluru city’s massive mountains of solid waste? In the frantic, decades-long struggle to deal with this mammoth issue, why has the focus shifted completely away from waste processing? As more quarries are identified as landfills, the search for a sustainable long-term solid waste management plan has hit rock bottom.
The clarity is clearly missing. The State-owned Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Limited (BSWML) recently floated a tender to set up two landfill sites in the city, one near Bagalur and another in Kada Agrahara in Mahadevapura. It also proposed to develop two existing ones for the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).
This came just weeks after Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar announced that all waste processing plants and landfills would be shifted out of the city soon. The waste, he declared, would go straight to Integrated Solid Waste Management Parks to be set up in 100-acre plots located far away from the city.
Integrated SWM Parks
On paper, the plan looks grand. The parks are to be equipped with composting units, dry waste aggregation centres, landfills for inert and rejects, generation of refuse-derived fuel and waste energy plants. The assurance to citizens is this: They could forget about all their problems linked to landfills, odour and other health hazards.
But what about the communities living around the proposed landfills? “The landfill areas they are talking about, whether it is in Kanakapura or Ramanagara, are all prime agricultural spaces. A hundred acres, with a buffer around it where the water will get spoilt … I can’t imagine how they have the heart to think of it,” notes Sandya Narayanan from the Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT).
Mountains of muck dumped by trucks laden with upwards of 4,000 tons per day for years have led to extreme groundwater contamination in Mandur and Mavallipura. “Today, if you walk through Mavallipura, you see everything burnt, dark, brown, the water spoiled. Mandur too is like that. They have spoiled the land areas around the landfills,” she says.
Not scientific, only dumps
The city’s daily solid waste generation, inclusive of bulk generators, now exceeds 6,500 tons. “The buffer area of one or two kilometres around the newly identified areas will be spoilt as well,” warns Sandya. The reason is clear: Landfills have never been scientifically structured. They are seen as mere garbage dumps.
In the West, scientific landfilling ensures that the waste (leachate) does not percolate down to the groundwater table and contaminate it. “The layering also ensures that the landfill gases do not escape either. Here, calling it a landfill itself gives a wrong impression. It is nothing but dumping. They just look for some quarry, dump the garbage and finish it,” she points out.
Indiscriminate dumping leads to the emission of poisonous methane gas, also sparking fires and extreme air pollution. Unscientific landfills are also a huge health hazard being a storehouse of bacteria and viruses, leading to lung and cardiovascular diseases.
Layers within ‘scientific’ landfills
Typically, scientific landfills prevent the leachate from seeping underground by building a base layer of 90 metres of clay. Atop this layer, a 15-metre drainage layer is built with soil. To minimise soil erosion, a vegetative layer of about 50cm is then applied. The absence of these layers had the entire groundwater table contaminated in Mandur, forcing the villagers to source water from distant Hoskote. The landfill there also lacked vertical wells, a feature of scientific structures to extract methane that could be used to generate electricity.
Landfills here are seen as a simple, lazy approach. As Sandya says, “They don’t want to do it the hard way by fixing the problem through waste processing. Landfill is an easy fix where, at least for some time, the problem goes away till someone else takes over. Even the commissioners are here for a year and a half term. Nobody wants to break their heads over it. This is a terrible approach.”
Waste-to-energy: Toxic, expensive
Waste processing is complex, requiring time, effort, pilot studies, deep analysis and scaling up. Currently, one approach being bandied about is waste-to-energy. Many solid waste management experts see this as unacceptable. They find it extremely toxic and very expensive. “It causes fly ash, residues, suspended air particles, asthma and all the related diseases. When you should be focusing on recovery, you are burning the whole thing. It is a ridiculous exercise.”
But why should plastic and e-waste be going to the landfills at all when existing legislation mandates that the producers and brands take the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)? This is the question posed by Wilma Rodrigues, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Saahas Zero Waste. “Today, you have very good legislation, and EPR regulations are very much in line to ensure that plastic and e-waste are not sent to the landfills,” she says.
EPR potential to tackle plastic, e-waste
The BSWML, which operates under BBMP, had recently registered for EPR, the implementation of which is expected to yield annual revenues of about ₹100 crore. It could now levy a fee on companies to process plastic and e-waste. The collected waste is to be processed and recycled in Bidadi.
So, here is a source of revenue, notes Wilma. “But this revenue has to go into a proper system, which means you have to bring about a behavioural change in people. People have to bring the waste to collection centres, it has to be stored appropriately and properly sorted and then sent to the material recovery facility. There should be a proper system in place to ensure that the waste does not actually go to landfills. We need to see more discussions on this,” she explains.
Unregulated dumping into unscientific landfills within the city has led to a whopping 50 lakh tons of legacy waste. Moves are now afoot by BSWML to call tenders for bio-mining and bio-capping of four landfills to address this issue. At least on paper, it would take another five years to clear this legacy waste, as cited in the last State Budget.
But bio-mining, too, needs to be done scientifically, as Mandur residents say. Raking up the waste, lying dormant for years, could spark up fresh trouble, odour issues and health hazards. Done with care and sensitivity, this could be tackled, say SWM experts, who also want the odour problem associated with bio-methanation to be fixed. As one of them asserts, “It is not an impossible task.”
