"Have you ever tracked down and located your garbage?" questioned Akshay Yadav, coordinator, Green Commandos of Youth For Seva Organisation(YFS) to a group of residents. The question left the residents wondering.

An Awareness presentation for Waste Management was held by YFS, at Raja Helix Apartments, Bilekahalli on Saturday, 14 January.

The poster outside the apartment. Pic: Deepthi M S

The presentation was on the importance of segregation of waste at source. Yadav explained that more than half of the daily waste was organic waste, which could be treated at home and turned into manure. He also added that by segregation, recycling dry waste would be easier.

"Bilekahalli is an ideal place to start such a campaign. It has people from all standards of life living here," explains Yadav, who choose Bilekahalli for their pilot project.

YFS plans to gradually introduce various such projects to Bilekahalli and in turn to make Bilekahalli as their model area. As a part of this, 9th main road of Bilekahalli was chosen for the pilot project.

"To begin with, we started campaigning about the waste segregation, on the 9th main of Bilekahalli," says Vinay Arun, an MBA student, one of the two students interning with YFS.

Interns went door-to-door on the 9th main road informing residents about waste segregation and usage of cloth bags.

Even though garbage is being collected, residents say it is not difficult to find garbage being thrown into gutters and empty sites. "The empty sites are turned into a place for dumping garbage, we need a solution to solve this," said Rashmi Shetty, 34, a homemaker who has joined the organisation as a volunteer.

The locals have faced numerous problems with process of disposal of garbage. "Due to the smell, our garbage bags were dragged down the stairs by street dogs," said Santhosh Kumar, 34, a resident of Raja Helix Apartments, who was eagerly looking out for an alternative for disposing wet waste.

Under this pilot project, YFS has arranged a local scrap dealer to come and collect dry waste at regular intervals in the pilot area.

Deepthi M S is an associate staff journalist.

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