BENGALURU: Bettahalasuru Gram Panchayat, a constituency of about 18,000 people in Bengaluru’s periphery, has achieved 97 per cent rate of source-segregation of garbage, shining a beacon on the state capital’s struggle with waste management. The panchayat runs a 2.5-acres wide facility that is compliant with the Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) Rules of 2016, processing around 5 tonnes of waste daily.
The system being used in Bettahalasuru is called ‘EcoGram’, which is implemented and managed by The Anonymous Indian Charitable Trust (TAICT), a not-for-profit organisation. Households in the village are assigned unique identifications with QR codes, and trained to segregate waste into wet, dry and sanitary/reject waste at source.
A baseline survey and registration of all waste generators has been done, and QR code-based tracking and monitoring are conducted to ensure door-to-door collection. Four vehicles, each with a driver and an operator, are assigned for waste collection. The collected waste is taken for processing to an integrated waste management facility, where wet waste is composted, dry waste is segregated, baled and sent to authorised recyclers, and sanitary/reject waste is safely disposed of.
The facility is equipped with sorting tables, conveyor systems, baling machines, shredders, weighing scales and material handling equipment, enabling efficient resource recovery and minimal landfill disposal.
The system allows for processing approximately 4.5 tonnes of segregated waste every day, which comes to nearly 135 tonne per month. Over the past nine years, 2,987 tonne of wet waste, 2,070 tonne of dry waste, 390 tonne of sanitary/reject waste, 527 tonne of legacy and mixed waste recovered from blackspots, and 1,525 tonne of dry waste from landfills have been processed.
In terms of ecological impact, the ecosystem has saved 1,505 kilolitres of fuel, and prevented 5,583 tonne of CO₂ emissions. “The initiative has created convenient employment opportunities for local villagers. Because of their continued efforts and commitment, there is now far greater cleanliness across Tarahunise, and our village has become a model for others,” said Rajeshwari, a resident of Tarahunise.
According to Kalpana, who teaches at a school in Sugatta, the system “has helped our school and village adopt better waste management practices by encouraging segregation at source and regularly collecting segregated waste”.