WHERE TO DUMP YOUR E-WASTE IN BANGALORE?

e-waste (Electronic Waste) aware? Then, you're surely concerned and you may be haunted by disturbing questions about your responsibility in the matter of trashing your e-waste safely. You know that e-waste is dangerous - far more dangerous than it looks. And you want to save the environment from its devastating effects. But you are in that familiar situation in which you ask "Should I be the first to act? Why not others? Let someone start first and then  I'll join in". Or "I work long hours and spend lots of time commuting too, leaving very little time for personal matters, so why don't the Pollution Control Board people come half way around to help by creating some conveniently located collection centers or install e-waste drop-boxes at popular places?" Another question maybe "What accumulation of e-waste (i.e. qty) is significant to necessitate  a visit to a collection center? Each time I replace cartridges in my printer, I am left with a pair of spent ones. Is it OK to toss the old cartridges into a roadside canal on my way to the office? After all, it's just two small cartridges, so maybe that much of e-waste won't really harm anyone. Alternately, should I visit a drop-box every time I am ready with a pair of spent cartridges?".

Surely questions like these are bound to keep troubling you, disturbing your peace! Yet a small inner voice from your heart says "I'll be really happy if I can give ALL my e-waste to honest recyclers. I want to give it each and every time, no matter how small the quantity, so that no harm is done to the environment. But ... is that really possible? I wish someone would help in a big way by extensively setting up the needed infrastructure and support".

All of us who are concerned have been thinking that way for a long time and solutions are beginning to appear publicly, now. So, it is with delight that I share (from a recent study of e-waste disposal facilities in the city) that there are nearly 70 places in and around Bangalore (as on the date of this post) that accept e-waste from individuals. You can see how they are distributed in the (Google) map below.

e-waste collection centers in Bangalore on 07-April-2018

e-waste drop box located at MK Retail store, Indiranagar (near CMH)

- I use this one!

Good news to you? Then its time to act, too!

So click on the map above (it will open a new browser window that displays a zoomable map with more details), find a collection point near where you live and you are all set. Resist the temptation to procrastinate or make excuses and dispose off your e-waste responsibly - not once but each and every time !

Note: To know more details of a collection center, click on its name displayed in the "Legend" sidebar at left. You should see a pop-up appear giving details of the chosen center (see map below) - whether it accepts e-waste from individuals (or only factories & businesses), mode(s) of acceptance, whether the organization will pay for e-waste and so on. Use that info to choose a center that best suits you. Good luck!

MY DISCOVERIES OF BANGALORE

I recently typed "Bangalore" in Google Maps and tried to make some sense of the shape it displayed - perimeter, area, similar looking shapes, specialties and so on (pl see the map below). 

Map of Bangalore

As you can see, the outline doesn't bring to mind any regular shape we know in geometry. There's a vague resemblance with Australia if you view it upside down - otherwise it's  shape is just that of another omelet! So I tried to make  some sense of it and here are a few things that I discovered along the way:

1. Many of us Bangaloreans think that Cubbon Park is the center of Bangalore. Well, that's somewhat correct, but according to the venerable Google Maps, Bangalore's center is (Lat, Long) (12.97159, 77.59456). If you look for details of this point, you'll find it is an office of IBM - IBM India Pvt Ltd D3 Block, Vittal Mallya Rd, Bangalore 560001. Maps' center is about 900 metres from Cubbon Park.

2. Bowing to Maps' choice of center, i.e using  IBM India D3 Block, Vittal Mallya Rd  as center, the biggest contiguous circle within Bangalore (i.e. using innermost border points from the center and excluding the small hatched space below Electronics City) is the one in dark red colour. It's radius is approximately 18.5 km.  Consequently, area and circumference are 1075.2 sq km and 116.2 km respectively. This inner circle passes through Whitefield, Baiyapanahalli, Sathanur, Makali, Thavarekere, Ramohalli, Kumbalgodu & Sompura.

2. The biggest circle that passes through/ close to most of Bangalore's periphery is the one in green colour. It has a radius of 24.3 km (Area=1855 sq km. Circumference=152.7 km).

3. Diagonals:

D1. Alappanahalli (13.078616, 77.797294)  to Maligondanahalli (12.899728, 77.434627) - 44.5 km

D2. Chowdappanahalli(13.140478, 77.747876) to Bidadi (12.803908, 77.401541) - 53.35 km

D3. Hosahalli (13.150505, 77.648733) to K. Chudahalli

(12.775784, 77.489431) - 45.6 km

D4. Ragihalli State Forest (12.743639, 77.559469) to Channahalli (13.175039, 77.614610) - 48.3 km

D5. Kukkanahalli (13.152495, 77.437407) to Sampangere (12.867854, 77.878891) - 57.6 km

D6. Neelamangala(13.116134, 77.385633) to Chandapura (12.801010, 77.713075) - 50km

The average of the above 6 diagonals is 50 km. Hence an imaginary circle that contains  "most of Bangalore" has a radius of 25 km. This agrees well with the result of Srl 2 above.

4. I used Maps' line tool to connect about 200 points along Bangalore's periphery  and found the approximate perimeter to be 249.9 km. An "equivalent" circle would have a radius of about 40 km. An equivalent square would have a side of 62.5 km.

5. As 25 km would be a good estimate of Bangalore's radius, 40 km (from Srl 4 above) is highly exaggerated. This mathematically reinforces our view that Bangalore is extremely bloated, far from any regular geometric shape. 

6. Area, by plotting points taken from Bangalore's border in a graph drawing software tool works out to 1630.5 sq km. This compares very poorly with the 709 sq km estimate given by Wikipedia. Either my estimate or Wiki's needs to be corrected soon.