Unsung Heroes: Octogenarian woman who helped change waste disposal in Indian cities is still worried about Bengaluru

“Frogs sang in the twilight on our scenic country road until 1991, when Bangalore city corporation began daily dumping truckloads of city garbage on both sides of the road and into the marshes and stream banks “because there is nowhere else to dump it,” she states.

“Till that time, like most city folk, I never knew or thought about where city garbage ended up or how,” she says. With the unregulated garbage dumping came the problem of packs of menacing stray dogs around the dumps.

Using her experience as an engineer with degrees from MIT in the US and as an entrepreneur and her innate love for nature and the environment, Almitra Patel set about finding solutions for Bangalore’s burgeoning garbage problem that went beyond the standard “not in my backyard”.

In the early years, Almitra, who is now recognised as one of the pioneers of efforts to resolve the waste disposal issue across India’s major cities, worked with Bangalore’s city officials and industries to find solutions for the garbage problem.

After the 1994 Surat plague, caused by unhygienic conditions, Almitra joined Capt J S Velu, who was also trying to find solutions for waste disposal in cities. He took part in the first of two Clean India campaigns he conceived. The campaign for maintaining hygiene took them to 30 municipalities by road in 30 days.

“We spent five days in Surat on our way to Delhi and returned via Nagpur-Hyderabad. We learnt as much as we were teaching and sharing on the way. We found door-to-door schemes that had evolved naturally in many cities,” she said in a post on “life as an environmentalist”.

One of the key things she found out during the first Clean India Campaign was that “not just Bangalore but almost all the cities of India had nowhere to dump their waste except all over the outskirts and approach roads”.

After her return to Bangalore, Almitra brainstormed with two friends who had been fighting to protect fragile ecosystems. They encouraged her to file a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court to bring about a policy for hygienic solid waste management in India.

In 1996, Almitra filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to halt the open dumping of garbage in Indian cities with populations exceeding one lakh. This led to the Ministry of Environment and Forests issuing the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules in 2000, applicable to all towns and cities with populations over 20,000.

In 1998, she was part of an eight-member Supreme Court-appointed committee that provided a report on solid waste management (SWM) in Class 1 cities in India. This eventually led to the formulation of the waste management rules by the MoEF in 2000.

“Because I was doing this for no personal gain, and throughout the case took an enabling, helpful and supportive attitude rather than an adversarial one of blaming others for the mess, I received tremendous support from the court for my efforts,” Almitra said.

Numerous awards have marked her recognition as one of the foremost campaigners for efficient solid waste management in India, including the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award, which she received on November 1, 2024. Additionally, she has served as an expert for the Swachh Bharat Mission since 2016, joined the Supreme Court committee for solid waste management in Delhi in 2018, and acted as an honorary consultant for the first compost plant in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2005.

Despite her early role in trying to create an efficient SWM system in Bengaluru, she is disappointed with how waste disposal has evolved in the city.

Speaking to The Indian Express, she said, “I am incredibly, incredibly dissatisfied. I am so disappointed that absolutely nobody is listening to the good advice. I have stopped talking to anybody for a few years. They know I live in the town, they know I am available but they do not care to ask because they don’t like the advice that is given.”

“The advice being offered is that enforcing the excellent solid waste rules established in 2016 can eliminate dumping issues in our area. Why is there still a focus on collecting mixed waste? In Maharashtra, seven cities, including Kalyan-Dombivli with a population of 1.8 million, have successfully become zero waste dump site cities,” she stated.

“We have to consider what they are doing and replicate it in every ward in every zone, then the city can be dump-free,” she said.

One of the significant problems with Bangalore’s waste disposal system, which she describes as a “hangover from colonial times,” is the payment structure for garbage contractors. This system is based on the weight of the garbage collected by the trucks, leading to mixed waste being taken to dump sites instead of segregated waste.

“The contractors threaten the doorstep collectors if you do not mix the waste which is given separately as wet and dry waste. They will not pay you. They are forced to mix it because the contractors want to show more weight at the dumping ground,” she said.

“If the contractors are paid per household, monitoring is possible through new technology like RFID and so many other things. It will encourage contractors to give all the dry waste to the nearest sorting centre and the wet waste to the piggery or centralised compositing or biogas unit or farmers or any other facility,” the environmentalist said.

“Once the waste is free of plastic, the wet waste can be used in many ways, and they will save money by crossing the town to reach the dumping yards and quarries. Dumping mixed waste in 60 ft deep quarries is the absolute worst thing to do because the high water pressure at the bottom forces polluting leachate from the wet waste deep into the groundwater, ruining it for future generations for decades,” she said.

“I have shifted my focus away from trying to reform Bangalore, as it seems resistant to constructive advice, and am now concentrating on other pressing issues. These include wastewater treatment, desilting of lakes, supplying silt and compost to farmlands, and reducing phosphates in detergents. There are many other important matters to address.”