BENGALURU: The management of Bengaluru's garbage could be going into private hands.Authorities have been creating an ecosystem where the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) will take on a regulatory role and solid waste management is passed on to the private sector.The civic body spends Rs 600 crore a year on solid waste management. This is a fourth of its annual revenue. The rationale behind privatisation is that private players would ease the burden of the cash-starved civic authority as they would use their own financial resources to collect, transport and process waste.The first step is to free the sector from the clutches of contractors. The new garbage tenders could do just that. "Collection and transportation of waste will be decentralised. Anyone can bid in the tender for one to five wards," Municipal Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said. "We are also relaxing the requirement for bidders to have prior experience. Contracts were going to the same people because of this."Since February 1, the civic body has stopped collecting mixed waste from households.The city's 160 dry waste collection centres (DWCC) have been asked to pick up dry waste while the civic body has kept wet and sanitary waste for itself. A majority of DWCCs are run by the private sector. "For the first three months, we will pay them for collection of dry waste. Later, we hope the DWCCs will evolve their own business model," BBMP Joint Commissioner (solid waste management) Sarfaraz Khan said. "They need to start seeing value in waste."A model through which the BBMP does not pay for collection and transportation is al ready in place in the bulk waste space. Most apartments, for example, give their waste to bulk waste vendors who are not paid by the civic body .The government is also looking at waste-to-energy units, two of which are coming up at Kanahalli and Mavallipura. "Companies setting up the units can take up collection and transportation of wet or sanitary waste, which they need to generate energy," said V Ramprasad, a solid waste expert.The main hurdle in the implementation of waste segregation and decentralised management is the nexus between contractors, officials and corporators, said Megha Shenoy from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment."The BBMP moving to a more regulatory role could affect this nexus and thereby improve implementation," she said.