Ramakanth holds 12 marathon SWM sessions for choultry & street vendors assn

Veteran SWM activist N S Ramakanth holding an awareness session at Hebbal on 21st August. Choultry owners, members from street vendors associations were present.

SWM is never a done deal. It’s always work in progress. It demands nothing less than never-dying passion and enthusiasm from you. And the epitome of these qualities is Solid Waste Managment Round Table founder member N S Ramakanth.

SWMRT veteran N S Ramakanth inaugurates steel plate bank at Tatanagar

Mr N S Ramakanth (centre) at the Independence Day celebrations held in Tatanagar, Bengaluru.

Not a day goes without our most-respected SWM veteran Mr N S Ramakanth doing something significant to mitigate the garbage crisis in Bengaluru.

Do not leave out waste-pickers from Karnataka’s waste management bylaws

With the Directorate of Municipal Administration, Karnataka, leaving out the waste-pickers who have been the backbone of everything to do with solid waste management thus far in its draft of the Karnataka Municipal Corporation Model Solid Waste Management Bylaws-2018 released on the 10/07/2018, here’s the feedback from Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT) which has raised its objections to the same. 

Our submission is to also consider the same feedback for the draft Karnataka Municipalities Solid Waste Management Bylaws 2018 as well.

Growing my own food and growing as a person

At the launch of OFYT’s website at Mydreamgarden in Bengaluru recently. OTG veteran Dr Vishwanath Narayan (third from right) shares nuggets of wisdom on growing one’s own food.

By Vani Murthy

Nearly 10 years ago, I visited a landfill, saw the destruction citizens like me left behind somewhere on the outskirts of the city that wreaked havoc on the people living around. This experience changed the course of my life forever.

As I began digging deeper and started observing every mundane act of mine from my changed perspective about everything to do with waste, I met some of the most passionate, caring and environmentally responsible people in this journey. What more, I also realised that I had a passion brewing somewhere deep inside: converting organic waste into compost.

How to “Beat plastic pollution?” Bengaluru gynaecologists show the way!

It was either steel, glass or melamine-coated plates, spoons, etc., at the 5-day CME meet held in Bengaluru recently.

Three hundred-plus doctors out on a 5-day Continuing Medical Education (CME) meet took up the challenge to make the conference completely eco-friendly. Here’s how.

There were many questions in the beginning though. The ones that nagged the most were: Is it really possible to have an eco-friendly conference? Will it be feasible? Will we be able to ensure a meet which is smart and clean? And will it be pocket-friendly as much as it is eco-friendly?

HSR activists turn night-time vigilante groups to stop garbage dumping

Concerned citizens busy keeping a tight vigil at night in HSR Layout to prevent irresponsible people from dumping mixed waste in street corners indiscriminately at odd hours.

This used to be a common sight in HSR: BBMP workers standing in knee-deep mixed waste and loading the autos even as they segregated and picked up anything recyclable. These workers’ hands and feet would often be cut by glass shards, infected by hazardous waste. This would force them to skip work often. Mounds of mixed waste filled the landfills day after day, contaminating the soil and affecting the lives of the people living nearby. Empathy towards these people brought together volunteers with a common purpose: to reduce our waste going for landfilling. Ward 174 (HSR) and Ward 173 (Jakkasandra) having active volunteer groups showed to the rest of Bangalore that with citizen participation, we can achieve the impossible.

Love to get my hands dirty with this kind of shit!

Earthworms are amazing creatures that keep our soil healthy by pooping out rich castings. One way to keep the worms happy and content is to feed them with good quality cow poop. I mean, cow dung.

A little about my own tryst with composting & all about walking that extra green mile

Plants, as the curriculum in my 4th grade environment textbook stated, were living organisms, just like you and I. They exhaled oxygen and inhaled harmful carbon dioxide making them important to our ecosystem. I, like every other naive and untrained kid in my class, bought this causation, and the next year, like my textbook, abandoned it in the realms of my subconscious mind.

Being human could be being zero waste

By Claire Rao

When Bangalore was reeling under the so-called ‘garbage crisis’, I was blissfully untouched by it. The reason – I compost all organic waste, including garden waste, generated in my house and take all the recyclables to the Dry Waste Collection Centre (DWCC). I love the concept of being ‘Zero Waste’, which has become the new mantra in every aspect of my life. This idea might sound very utopian but after years of segregating waste and encouraging and educating people around me about the necessity of doing so, I have learnt that the easiest way is to drastically reduce the amount of waste that we generate.

Dharavi: Why not make the invisible, visible?

“Mumbai is a crowd. Dharavi, with people oozing out of every crack and countless quarters of artisans and small industries, is often referred to as the throbbing heart of the city” –  V.S. Naipaul

By Pinky Chandran

Born and brought up in Bombay, like other Mumbaikars, I took Dharavi for granted. It was a place that one just passed by, either in disdain or disgust. Stories of the Underworld and mafia dominated the narratives of Dharavi. It was the go-to place for people who came to Mumbai with dreams of a better life, but chose to stay there or the surrounding areas for the cheaper rentals.