Refuse piles up by roadsides as government and Corporation slug it out

On December 20, 2011, when the last truckloads of garbage from the capital city rolled into the solid waste treatment plant at Vilappilsala, not many in the city thought that the next day would be any different. Harsh reality dawned the next morning. The city could not longer ‘export’ its garbage. A year later, most of the high-rises in the city have their own solid-waste treatment systems, thousands of houses have a pipe-compost facility, five schools in the city have a biogas plant each, and even the headquarters of the city Corporation will have a biogas plant up and running in less than two weeks. That is the sunny side of the story.