Growing garbage pile causing nausea and pollution in Bhubaneswar

BHUBANESWAR, Odisha: Solid waste dump in the capital city of Odisha has crossed the 50,000 tonnes mark in the last six months, prompting the local residents to relocate due to increasing nausea levels and pollution caused by the garbage dump.

This garbage dump has been raising question marks on the performance of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), under whose nose this crisis has been brewing for the past two years.

Bhubaneswar has been rated as one of the most livable cities in India. It generates nearly 700 tonnes of solid waste every day, and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) is struggling to process the generated waste. The urban local body was planning to dispose of the waste at a different dumping site, which faced opposition from the villagers, dissuading the corporation from pursuing this plan. This opposition has forced the corporation to deposit all the waste at a transit point. 

The waste accumulation problem is due to employing unscientific landfill methods, a problem which is not restricted to BMC only. As per the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) data, in 2,035 wards in 115 urban local bodies of Odisha, 100 per cent door-to-door collection and waste segregation have already been achieved. However, only 1,500 tonnes per day (TPD) of collected waste gets processed out of the 1,721 TPD of waste generated every day.