Waste segregation at source is mandatory in Bengaluru, but compliance remains inconsistent for several reasons, primarily because it requires close coordination between citizens, collection staff, and civic authorities.
Published Nov 01, 2025 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Nov 01, 2025 | 9:00 AM
Collection schedules are another issue that often force residents to dump waste.
Synopsis: As Bengaluru’s civic authorities roll out a contentious drive to penalise residents who dump waste on the streets instead of handing it to authorised collectors, it has reignited debate over the city’s uneven waste management system. Experts and citizens say the collection process places an undue burden on residents, while irregular collection schedules, the absence of public bins, and impractical expectations of compliance have left many struggling to dispose of waste responsibly.
Bengaluru’s civic bodies have launched a new initiative called Kasa Surisuva Habba, or the “garbage-dumping festival”, to identify habitual offenders who dispose of waste on roadsides instead of handing it over to collection agencies. As part of the drive, the dumped waste is being placed back in front of the offenders’ homes.
Officials from Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Limited said the initiative aims to curb public nuisance and encourage citizens to hand over waste directly to authorised collection vehicles.
However, the drive has renewed scrutiny of the city’s waste segregation practices, the training of collection staff, and the regularity of waste collection. Citizens and experts have highlighted gaps in the system and said it places an undue burden on residents to ensure proper handling and disposal.
Waste segregation at source is mandatory in Bengaluru, but compliance remains inconsistent for several reasons, primarily because it requires close coordination between citizens, collection staff, and civic authorities.
“In apartment complexes with fewer than 50 homes, residents can give their waste to the local corporation tipper, but for those with more than 50 homes, they have to take the services of an empanelled vendor,” said Smita Kulkarni, Communications Consultant with Saahas NGO, speaking to South First.
Every morning, the civic agency conducts a mustering process to record staff and vehicle attendance, and route maps are used to ensure no locality is left out. Tipper personnel are also expected to report black spots for clean-up.
“In most layouts, tippers are fairly regular, and the system works if both citizens and staff follow segregation norms,” noted Smita Kulkarni.
However, she acknowledged that many residents still fail to segregate waste properly or miss collection timings, often resorting to dumping it on the streets.
“If you are giving waste to the local corporation tipper person, then that person is responsible for ensuring it is collected in a segregated manner. If someone is not segregating, he is supposed to inform the health inspector and report the matter,” she added.
Experts say effective waste management depends equally on trained collection staff. According to Marwan Abubaker, Co-founder of Hasiru Dala Innovations Pvt Ltd, tipper drivers and helpers are instructed to collect only segregated waste.
“Initially, health inspectors and marshals accompanied vehicles to monitor and educate residents,” he said.
In areas with strong civic engagement, this approach has worked well. “In HAL 3rd Stage near Thippasandra, tipper staff accept only wet waste and insist residents segregate properly,” Abubaker noted.
Collection schedules are another issue that often force residents to dump waste.
Although the system is designed for daily collection of wet and reject waste, and twice-weekly collection of dry waste, operational changes have disrupted the routine. Recently, civic authorities advanced morning collection timings from 9 am to between 7 and 8 am to improve efficiency.
However, this shift has led to unintended consequences. “When people miss the early morning collection, they pack their waste and dump it on street corners,” said Abubaker.
Economist Narendar Pani, JRD Tata Chair Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, said the removal of public waste bins years ago, on the advice of corporate-led task forces such as those led by Nandan Nilekani and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, has worsened the city’s waste problem.
“The elite members of these groups believed that the waste bins could be replaced by the garbage being collected from each household,” he wrote in a post on X. Pani added that critics who predicted the eventual outcome at the time were dismissed with the argument that ‘overflowing garbage bins’ were undesirable.
Bengaluru’s corporates blame governments and even citizens for the garbage crisis but remain blind to their own role in the problem. The crisis is a simple problem of the removal of all waste bins in the city. This was done on the advice of the Bangalore Agenda Task Force …
— Narendar Pani (@narendar_pani) October 21, 2025
“The fact that working people can’t wait for the garbage collector every day did not enter the minds of those who had servants at home to hand over the garbage. The working people have no option but to leave the garbage on street corners,” he wrote.
“Not having any training in urban planning, they refused to recognise that the solution to overflowing garbage bins is to have more bins, not remove the ones that exist. Introspection is clearly not a habit Indian corporate leaders like to develop. It’s so much simpler to find others to blame.”
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
