For four hours on a September morning, volunteers clearing the edge of Bengaluru’s Turahalli Forest kept finding more than plastic.
Under heaps of discarded packaging and household waste were dog carcasses stuffed into bags, poultry refuse, sanitary waste and medical waste. By the time the cleanup ended, more than two tonnes of legacy waste had been removed from the forest boundary.
The discovery came during a ‘Clean Up Turahalli’ drive on 12 September, led by Madhya Pradesh-based environmental activist Surendra Singh Choudhary, popularly known as Bittu Tabahi, along with local volunteers, environmentalist A N Yellappa Reddy and members of India Plog Run.
For Bittu, this was his first major cleanup outside Madhya Pradesh. He had recently gained attention for documenting his efforts to clean the heavily polluted Ajnar River in Rajgarh district, where he spent money from his own pocket on tools and repeatedly returned to remove accumulated waste.
At Turahalli, he expected plastic.
“Initially, I thought it would be only plastic waste, but as I started clearing it, I was stunned to find dog carcasses and medical waste underneath the plastic heaps,” he told The Times of India.
The discovery points to a larger problem: when an urban forest becomes an unofficial dumping ground, waste does not remain confined to a pile.
A forest with more life than the city sees
Turahalli may sit within Bengaluru’s expanding urban landscape, but research shows that its ecological value is not simply about having trees in a city.
A 2023 study by researchers from Kuvempu University, which examined the forest’s bird diversity between April 2020 and May 2022, recorded 139 bird species belonging to 54 families and 19 orders. The researchers described Turahalli Minor Forest as an important habitat for resident as well as migratory birds.
Plastic, food refuse, and animal remains can alter what wildlife encounters at the forest edge, while waste that is buried or broken down can enter the soil and, eventually, water.
What biomedical waste can leave behind
Medical waste is not simply another form of household garbage.
India’s biomedical waste rules require healthcare waste to be segregated and treated through prescribed methods rather than being discarded with ordinary municipal waste. The Central Pollution Control Board has also warned of the need for proper collection, treatment, and disposal because such waste can pose environmental and health risks.
There is another concern: biomedical waste can carry microorganisms that are difficult to treat. A 2026 study by researchers in Karnataka, published in the Journal of Pure and Applied Microbiology, investigated hospital biomedical waste from healthcare facilities across three Karnataka districts and identified biomedical waste as a potential reservoir for multidrug-resistant pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
None of these studies establish that Turahalli’s soil is contaminated with antibiotics or resistant bacteria. That would require site-specific sampling and testing. But they explain why dumping medical waste in an ecologically sensitive landscape is not equivalent to leaving behind ordinary litter.
Cleaning the pile is only the beginning
At Turahalli, the cleanup showed what can happen when people choose to take responsibility for a landscape that has long been treated as a dumping ground. A backhoe was brought in to reach waste too deeply embedded to be removed by hand, while volunteers worked along the forest boundary for hours.
Turahalli is home to a documented diversity of birdlife and has played a role in Bengaluru’s water landscape. Each bag of waste removed from its edges is therefore more than a cleaner patch of ground; it is a small step towards keeping an urban forest usable for the wildlife and communities that depend on it.
Sources:
‘Bittu Tabahi leads 100 people in massive clean-up of Bengaluru’s Turahalli Forest’: By India Today Trending Desk, Published on 14 September 2026
‘Status, Diversity and Conservation of Avifauna at Turahalli Minor Forest, Bangalore, Karnataka, India’: By Ashwini R., Vijaya Kumara, Published in 2023
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thebetterindia.com
