Mangaluru waste management could receive a major capacity boost after the Mangaluru City Corporation and Dakshina Kannada zilla panchayat proposed a 10-tonne-per-day incineration facility for sanitary waste, with the joint urban-rural project now before the cabinet, MCC commissioner Rahul Ratnam Pandey said.
The proposal was disclosed during an interaction programme on waste and traffic management organised by Sri Ambamaheshwari Seva Trust as part of its ‘Awake Kudla’ campaign. Pandey said Mangaluru generates around 3.3 tonnes of sanitary waste every day but currently has only one private incinerator available for its disposal.
The Dakshina Kannada zilla panchayat has separately proposed a three-tonne-per-day facility for rural areas. The proposed 10-TPD facility would serve both rural and urban areas, according to the commissioner. The report did not specify the proposed location, technology, project cost or implementation timeline.
Mangaluru generates around 300 tonnes of waste daily, of which approximately 65% is segregated and 35% remains unsegregated, Pandey said. He called for segregation at source to be increased to as close to 100% as possible, noting that performance varies sharply between wards. Some wards record segregation rates below the city’s average, while others exceed 90%.
The figures point to two linked operational challenges for the corporation: the need to expand specialised treatment capacity for sanitary waste and the need to reduce the amount of mixed waste entering the disposal chain. Sanitary waste requires separate handling because it cannot be managed through the same processes used for ordinary wet and dry municipal waste.
The commissioner also said Mangaluru does not currently have a dedicated disposal site for construction and demolition waste. Although the government has notified construction and demolition waste management rules, the city still needs to identify a site and establish a processing system for debris from new construction and demolitions.
Legacy waste at the city’s disposal site has also increased. Based on 2021 estimates, the site held around nine lakh tonnes of legacy waste, but the current quantity is likely between 12 lakh and 13 lakh tonnes, Pandey said. Around 2.1 lakh tonnes had earlier been processed through bio-remediation, but the work stalled because of contractual and legal complications.
Pandey said the remediation work needed to resume as fresh waste continues to reach the site. He also referred to the waste landslide tragedy of 2019, highlighting the continuing safety implications of accumulated waste and delayed processing.
The interaction also covered traffic management in the growing city. Mangaluru deputy commissioner of police (crime and traffic) Ravi Shankar K said traffic violation cases had increased by 20% compared with the previous year. Police registered 1,45,000 cases last year and collected Rs 9.6 crore in fines, he said.
The police have submitted proposals for improvements at several junctions, including 12 requests made to the MCC. The DCP said the number of signalised junctions remains limited and that the stretch from the Clock Tower through Ambedkar Circle to Hampankatta is narrow while vehicle volumes are rising.
A proposal has also been submitted for a flyover from the Clock Tower through Ambedkar Circle to Kankanady Junction. The immediate next step for the sanitary waste project is consideration of the joint 10-TPD incinerator proposal by the cabinet, while the city must separately address source segregation, legacy waste processing and the absence of a dedicated construction and demolition waste facility.
