In her weblog introduction, Almitra Patel, 87, who has lived in Bangalore for the final 52 years, shares how she started her efforts to advertise strong waste administration within the metropolis.
In 1991, vehicles carrying rubbish from the town started dumping their masses by the facet of roads on the jap fringe of Bangalore, close to Kothanu. This space was nonetheless idyllic and dotted by personal farms like her personal, the place the evening air was stuffed with the sounds of frogs.
“Frogs sang within the twilight on our scenic nation highway till 1991, when Bangalore metropolis company started day by day dumping truckloads of metropolis rubbish on either side of the highway and into the marshes and stream banks “as a result of there’s nowhere else to dump it,” she states.
“Until that point, like most metropolis folks, I by no means knew or considered the place metropolis rubbish ended up or how,” she says. With the unregulated rubbish dumping got here the issue of packs of menacing stray canine across the dumps.
Utilizing her expertise as an engineer with levels from MIT within the US and as an entrepreneur and her innate love for nature and the atmosphere, Almitra Patel set about discovering options for Bangalore’s burgeoning rubbish downside that went past the usual “not in my yard”.
Within the early years, Almitra, who’s now recognised as one of many pioneers of efforts to resolve the waste disposal situation throughout India’s main cities, labored with Bangalore’s metropolis officers and industries to search out options for the rubbish downside.
After the 1994 Surat plague, brought on by unhygienic circumstances, Almitra joined Capt J S Velu, who was additionally looking for options for waste disposal in cities. He took half within the first of two Clear India campaigns he conceived. The marketing campaign for sustaining hygiene took them to 30 municipalities by highway in 30 days.
“We spent 5 days in Surat on our technique to Delhi and returned by way of Nagpur-Hyderabad. We learnt as a lot as we have been instructing and sharing on the best way. We discovered door-to-door schemes that had developed naturally in lots of cities,” she stated in a put up on “life as an environmentalist”.
One of many key issues she came upon through the first Clear India Marketing campaign was that “not simply Bangalore however virtually all of the cities of India had nowhere to dump their waste besides everywhere in the outskirts and strategy roads”.
After her return to Bangalore, Almitra brainstormed with two buddies who had been preventing to guard fragile ecosystems. They inspired her to file a Public Curiosity Litigation within the Supreme Court docket to convey a few coverage for hygienic strong waste administration in India.
In 1996, Almitra filed a Public Curiosity Litigation (PIL) to halt the open dumping of rubbish in Indian cities with populations exceeding one lakh. This led to the Ministry of Setting and Forests issuing the Municipal Stable Waste (Administration and Dealing with) Guidelines in 2000, relevant to all cities and cities with populations over 20,000.
In 1998, she was a part of an eight-member Supreme Court docket-appointed committee that offered a report on strong waste administration (SWM) in Class 1 cities in India. This finally led to the formulation of the waste administration guidelines by the MoEF in 2000.
“As a result of I used to be doing this for no private acquire, and all through the case took an enabling, useful and supportive perspective moderately than an adversarial one in all blaming others for the mess, I acquired large help from the court docket for my efforts,” Almitra stated.
Quite a few awards have marked her recognition as one of many foremost campaigners for environment friendly strong waste administration in India, together with the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award, which she acquired on November 1, 2024. Moreover, she has served as an professional for the Swachh Bharat Mission since 2016, joined the Supreme Court docket committee for strong waste administration in Delhi in 2018, and acted as an honorary advisor for the primary compost plant in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2005.
Regardless of her early position in attempting to create an environment friendly SWM system in Bengaluru, she is disenchanted with how waste disposal has developed within the metropolis.
Chatting with The Indian Categorical, she stated, “I’m extremely, extremely dissatisfied. I’m so disenchanted that completely no person is listening to the great recommendation. I’ve stopped speaking to anyone for a couple of years. They know I reside within the city, they know I’m accessible however they don’t care to ask as a result of they don’t like the recommendation that’s given.”
“The recommendation being provided is that implementing the superb strong waste guidelines established in 2016 can remove dumping points in our space. Why is there nonetheless a deal with gathering combined waste? In Maharashtra, seven cities, together with Kalyan-Dombivli with a inhabitants of 1.8 million, have efficiently grow to be zero waste dump website cities,” she said.
“We have now to contemplate what they’re doing and replicate it in each ward in each zone, then the town may be dump-free,” she stated.
One of many important issues with Bangalore’s waste disposal system, which she describes as a “hangover from colonial instances,” is the cost construction for rubbish contractors. This method relies on the load of the rubbish collected by the vehicles, resulting in combined waste being taken to dump websites as a substitute of segregated waste.
“The contractors threaten the doorstep collectors if you don’t combine the waste which is given individually as moist and dry waste. They won’t pay you. They’re pressured to combine it as a result of the contractors need to present extra weight on the dumping floor,” she stated.
“If the contractors are paid per family, monitoring is feasible via new know-how like RFID and so many different issues. It’ll encourage contractors to present all of the dry waste to the closest sorting centre and the moist waste to the piggery or centralised compositing or biogas unit or farmers or some other facility,” the environmentalist stated.
“As soon as the waste is freed from plastic, the moist waste can be utilized in some ways, and they’ll get monetary savings by crossing the city to achieve the dumping yards and quarries. Dumping combined waste in 60 ft deep quarries is absolutely the worst factor to do as a result of the excessive water strain on the backside forces polluting leachate from the moist waste deep into the groundwater, ruining it for future generations for many years,” she stated.
“I’ve shifted my focus away from attempting to reform Bangalore, because it appears proof against constructive recommendation, and am now concentrating on different urgent points. These embrace wastewater therapy, desilting of lakes, supplying silt and compost to farmlands, and decreasing phosphates in detergents. There are a lot of different vital issues to handle.”
