Community Participation in Waste Management, Experiences of a pilot project in Bangalore India

Anjana Iyer, Poornima D.G. & Manjula N.Rao (2001)

Since the beginning of the nineties, Bangalore city has seen the growth of several community based self-help initiatives around the theme of neighbourhood waste management. At the start of the UWEP project in 1998, more than 35 schemes were in operation throughout the city, involving different levels of waste services from collection to local composting. Each scheme on the average covered about 300 households. Separation at source was practised, recyclables were being sold to itinerant buyers and wholesalers, and compost produced from organic waste was being sold. Partners in these schemes are the community and NGOs.

Besides, there are three medium/large enterprises (two private and one government) that collect organic waste from selected areas and compost it. Neighbourhood based projects were not being run on the basis of full cost recovery and the capital cost was being met out of contributions or donations. This situation warranted a system to make the collection, transportation and treatment of solid waste efficient, cost effective and environmentally sound. Therefore, while these experiments certainly yielded useful lessons, it was felt necessary to try out the application of a solid waste plan on the scale of a ward1 (about 40- 50,000 population).

The Integrated Sustainable Waste Management Plan for Nagapura, implemented under the Urban Waste Expertise Programme (UWEP), sought to bring together all stakeholders in a project to manage the solid waste generated in the ward in an integrated way.

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