BENGALURU: The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has come forward to help the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike manage waste accumulated in the landfills near the city. But the civic body does not seem very interested.
BBMP has been wrestling with garbage disposal for a few years now, with villagers around the city stoutly opposing the dumping of waste in landfills nearby.
Recently, Prof Sivakumar Babu at the Department of Civil Engineering, IISc, led a study on the landfill at Mavallipura, and came up with a possible solution.
P Lakshmikanthan, a PhD student, and the team examined how landfill material settled (or ‘shrank’) in laboratory conditions and found that irrespective of how big or small the particles were, biodegradation played a strong role in settling landfill material, and that more than 40 per cent of all waste is biodegradable.
Dr Sivakumar told Express, “Segregation is extremely important. Only what cannot be recycled must go to the landfills.”
He said the fact that more than 40 per cent waste is biodegradable gives scope for bioreactor landfills. Besides generating gas, these can also help manage the waste better, he added.
“The settlement is fast and stabilisation quicker,” said Lakshmikanthan, a co-author of the study. “Landfills under the bioreactor model take five to eight years to stabilise, as against the 30 years taken by conventional landfills. We tried contacting the BBMP, the Pollution Control Board and other authorities but didn’t get any response,” he said.
Speaking to Express, BBMP Solid Waste Management Expert Committee member N S Ramakanth said such a proposal has been around for the past one and a half years.
“However, nobody has come to us with any findings as such. We know that a part of the waste gets decomposed at the landfill itself,” he said.
Ramakanth said he did not know why approval was not granted for this proposal, but added, “After approval is given, we can look at the next course of action on how the proposal can take shape.”