As if Bangalore didn’t have enough civic problems, the Mayor of Bangalore has asked all households to install Pulverizer in their kitchens!! The intentions of this suggestion may be good but the repercussions of such a move will be a disaster!
While the Kitchen Waste Pulverizer sounds like a space-age gadget straight out of a Hollywood movie, It’s is nothing but a grinding machine attached under the bottom of the kitchen sink which grinds all the organic waste generated in the kitchen dumped in the sink to a coarse paste. And where does this waste go? Into our already ‘bursting at the seams’ drains. Please note that 60 % of the waste we generate at homes is organic!
It’s scary to imagine the consequences if these contraptions are installed even in 5% of Bangalore’s houses.
Everywhere we come across blocked drains overflowing with unhygienic contents and the BWSSB isn’t able to handle the existing drainage system! if we add tons of organic waste into these already choked drains, it’s not difficult to imagine what would happen. It would be catastrophic, to say the least. We would have the biggest Drainage Crisis in History!
First and foremost we do not have the infrastructure to handle the current drainage and certainly not the humongous extra load of organic waste from kitchens which will get into the drainage system if we install Pulverizers.
Bangalore is a leader of sorts in solid waste management. Scores of social entrepreneurs, volunteers, and citizens along with civic agencies are working tirelessly to make the city more waste sensitive and reduce the load on landfills. Thousands have started composting, many apartments are managing their waste themselves, organic waste centres are composting tons of organic waste every day. A lot of awareness is being created through Composting Santés conducted in different localities across Bangalore.
Yes, it will take some time for the entire city to become waste efficient but we will slowly get there if we persist in what we have already started.
After a lot of research, we now know that segregation and composting are the only solutions to our garbage crisis.
Composting not only takes care of all the organic waste, it yields rich natural manure which is black gold to farmers. The more compost we produce, the more access we have to organic produce.
Simple yet amazing solutions for composting are now available to manage organic waste in all sectors. Passionate social entrepreneurs and volunteers are ready to help people to get on to the composting bandwagon. It’s a myth that composting is not for everyone. Every day more and more people are starting to adopt this eco-friendly practice.
Awareness on composting is spreading throughout the city. At this juncture, promoting kitchen waste pulverizers will take us ten steps backward instead of forwards.
We just lost three precious lives to manual scavenging. This inhuman method of manually cleaning blocked drains have claimed the lives of scores of men. At a time when we should be looking at methods to reduce blockages in drains, the waste pulverizer will only add to the existing mess in the drains and choke them even more. These Pulverizers are in no way a solution to our garbage crisis.
When we already have the most natural and sustainable means of handling organic waste which is Composting, we shouldn’t bring on something without proper research and overburden our civic agencies. They are already grappling to meet the demands of our city which is growing every day!
Say YES to Composting and a big NO to Kitchen Waste Pulverizer!