They call it the garden city, though more lately it’s trash town, thanks to the recent shutdown of three landfills that take garbage from the city of more than 8 million people.
Bangalore’s residents in August and early September dealt with stench and garbage as tonnes of rotten food, flowers, paper and plastic bags leaking noisome muck spilled into the streets and roads.
People were forced to walk on roads clogged with cars, trucks and mopeds as filth caked the sidewalks, and wild dogs and stray cows gorged. Schools declared holidays to prevent students from falling ill, and the rain isn’t helping.
The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) ordered the landfills’ owners to shut their doors after villagers in and around the dumps complained to the board of deaths and health problems related to garbage disposal. The landfills recently reopened after the city promised changes in how it collects garbage, as well as how much it collects.
Bangalore, one of the few cities in India that has a robust door-to-door collection system, generates about 4,000 tonnes of garbage every day. The city dumps it in 310 acres of yards: 80 acres in Mavallipura near the air force base town of Yelahanka on the way to Bangalore’s shiny, new airport; 130 acres in Mandur, off Old Airport Road (not far from the Reuters office) and 100 acres in Doddaballapura.
