Eco-awareness might be a fashionable green slogan. But its transition to action mode has been slow in the City.

To accelerate this process among students in the City’s estimated 8,200 educational institutions, GIZ, a German bilateral cooperation agency, has come up with a workable idea: Let the students learn from and replicate in their schools the ‘Green Wicket’ project launched recently at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium here.

If incessant sewage inflow, unchecked encroachments and poor maintenance threaten to kill the city’s remaining lakes, there is one big reason: Lake restoration efforts have become mere cosmetic bea

The organised sector handles only 10 per cent of e-waste. The rest is handled by the unorganised sector that employs unscientific methods.

Bangalore surely basked in the global glory of its “IT hub” tag for years. Thanks to the huge IT revenues it generated and the big ticket firms that dug deep roots here, Bangalore deserved that. But now, it is wake up time. No, not from its unrelenting garbage piles or its mounting civic problems, but this time from the rising threat of its electronic waste. Rising because, the city’s e-waste volumes are going beyond 18,000 metric tonnes per annum, an astounding piece of statistic brought home by a recent Assocham survey.

Thousands of trees might have faced the infrastructural axe in the City, reducing afforestation to a mere eco-slogan.

The unrelenting noise from the rising vehicular traffic around schools in the City has an immediate cause for worry: 

Reduced attention span and memory in elementary school children, as established again by a recent study conducted in partnership with the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB).

Pollutant levels skyrocket to three times the permissible limit

The deadliest pollutant in Bangalore’s air, the Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter (RSPM) has gone up to an astounding 200 to 300 per cent of the permissible limits.

Bangalore’s unprecedented fall into the depths of waste management standards has triggered global attention, even a dramatic New York Times article.

While many took offence at this inglorious attack on the city’s image, the civic agencies might have to depend on international help to arrest this dangerous slide into absolute chaos. German help, to be precise. On a visit to Bangalore, the German State Secretary for Economic Cooperation, Gudrun Kopp elaborated on this vital input and how the experience of Germany’s enduring 12-year partnership with the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) on waste management might just turn the tide.