Question

essay on green city clean city Bengaluru

Answer 1

Towards a ‘CLEAN’ Bangalore !
Chaya Chengappa and Abraham
The "Garden City" of the country -Bangalore, has the distinction of being the fastest growing city in Asia with a rapidly increasing population, now estimated to be over six million (4.5 million, 1990 census). However, such a growth has had a negative impact on the environmental quality of the city and the already strained infrastructure facilities. Increasing growth of industries along with unplanned housing, slums, inadequate water supply and sewerage, pollution of air and water, huge quantities of solid wastes, degradation of its numerous lakes and noise pollution are some of the major concerns facing the city today.

With a view to create awareness on the problems facing the city and with a hope to catalyse remedial actions, the CLEAN-India movement was launched in Bangalore in July 1999. With limited resources at hand, three schools initiated the programme in the city, namely Bishop Cotton’s Girls High School, Centre for Learning and Sri Vani High School.

An orientation workshop was held to train teachers and students on the needs and means of monitoring the environment quality. As a part of the programme, the students learnt to monitor the water and air quality, using the field kits-Jal-TARA and Pawan-TARA. A field trip to the highly polluted Ulsoor Lake in the eastern part of the city provided an opportunity for the children to have a practical experience in using the Jal-TARA kit. It also helped them observe the problems associated with the lake’s environment and its extent of pollution.

The city of Bangalore has been delineated into ten zones to facilitate environment monitoring. At this stage, three schools have collected water samples from various sites in three different zones and monitored the water quality during the monsoon, winter and summer seasons using the Jal-TARA kit.

There has been great enthusiasm,both among children and teachers, to monitor water samples from different parts of the city. Although the results do not indicate very high pollution levels in drinking water, we have several more zones to cover and therefore more samples to analyse. The surface waters (lakes) have indicated high pollution levels. The number of lakes in the city have dwindled from about 250 in the 1960s to around 80 at present due to dumping of raw sewage, solid waste, industrial effluents, siltation and encroachment.

School-level environment education activities with the emphasis on plastic carry bag management and water conservation have also been conducted and a demonstrative vermicomposting unit has been initiated in two schools.

The reach of CLEAN - Bangalore will increase this year so that the programme will have a greater impact when many more schools join the network. Four more schools are likely to join the programme in June 2000, namely Poorna Learning Centre and Clarence High School.

The ultimate aim of the programme is that assessment and awareness must lead to actions to improve the environment. The implementation of action programmes, which include solid waste management, rainwater harvesting, paper recycling, tree planting, etc., will be initiated in this academic year.

A spatial representation of the water and air quality with the help of the data collected will indicate the pollution levels in various parts of the city. The inclusion of Resident Welfare Associations in the programme will ensure effectiveness in implementing the action programmes in the community. We hope that for the children, action can become a powerful way of learning about the environment and induce a realisation that their actions can make a difference.

Answer 2

A city will be clean if everyone is thinking about how to keep every city clean. Bangalore is a city that is considered as a clean city.

It is considered also as 'Garden City'.

In our city, Bangalore city is the only pollution-free city.

The citizens' duty is to keep the city clean.

So, seeing them, we should learn something and we should do our own duty.