The garbage crisis in the City showed no signs of waning on Wednesday, as Mayor D Venkatesh Murthy agreed to stop completely garbage dumping in the Mavallipura landfill.

Following the blockade by residents of 18 villages surrounding the landfill, and yielding to pressure from the Yelahanka MLA S R Vishwanath, the BBMP had to relent and announced the virtual shutdown following a proposal passed by the Palike Council.

Bangalore, the nation’s information technology capital, has entered the second harrowing week of being in threat of drowning in its own garbage because the landfills serving it cannot be used. In the process, the city’s municipal commissioner is being transferred.

The city’s experience offers a lesson to all major urban centres in the country, which will come to grief if they do not follow the right policies. On the other hand, those that have done so like Kanpur and Pune have become role models.

The failure to implement the 74th Amendment to the Constitution, enacted in 1992, is directly responsible for the garbage mess in the city. That’s the opinion of an expert on civic issues. The 74th Amendment sought to strengthen the urban local bodies.

But, “the centralisation of powers in the state has continued and has finally resulted in the garbage mess that is afflicting the city today,” said Leo Saldanha, co-ordinator of Environment Support Group (ESG), an NGO that deals with a variety of environmental and social justice initiatives.

Warning of serious action if the administration remained lackadaisical in resolving the city’s garbage disposal problem, the Karnataka High Court on Monday directed the State government and the Bruhat Bangalore Mahangara Palike (BBMP) to file a report in three days on the situation.

The court, in its order, also said it disagrees with the statements of certain “public figures” who have said that residents of villages close to garbage landfills should be tolerant.

The City’s failure to adhere to the norm on garbage segregation at source may soon force the State government and BBMP to make it mandatory.

The Palike is keen on such a step and is in the process of verifying whether the Supreme Court’s recent remark on the subject is an observation or a directive. “It is learnt that the Supreme Court has spoken on the matter recently. Whether segregation at source is an observation or a directive is to be verified,” said Palike Commissioner Shankarlinge Gowda.

The garbage crisis, which the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) claimed to have mitigated in the last 24 hours, is likely to worsen with residents of Mandur deciding on a blockade on Monday.

Agitated by the amount of garbage being dumped at the landfill off Bangalore-Hoskote Road near Begur Cross, residents of the Mandur Gram Panchayat have decided to block the entry of all the BBMP trucks to the dumping yard.

Unattended rubbish heaps invite insects, rodents and stray animals. They do not, however, have any direct implication on people’s health, experts say.

But if flies from garbage dumps bite someone, there are chances of him/her developing ‘insect bite allergy’, Dr Maya Philip, dermatologist, Mallya Hospital, said. There is no known case of skin allergies caused by garbage. Those residing close to garbage dumps, especially in landfill areas, do suffer from insect bite allergies. Skin rashes are mainly seen among those who handle garbage with their hands,” she said.

It was called Treasure Island in honour of Robert Louis Stevenson's pirate classic, but the artificial island off San Francisco bay has nothing but trouble buried in its soil: radioactive contamina

Using the garbage of Dhaka city, the government for the first time is going to generate 50 megawatt of electricity to add to the national grid.

Air Products will build and operate a 50MW advanced gasification plant making it the most powerful energy-from-waste facility of its type in the world, the company claims.