Waste Handling and Well-Being

Waste handling and well-being

G Venkatesh*

‘God save our nation,’ says one. ‘Things will change slowly,’ says another. All in all, everyone believes that the status quo is far from what is desired, as far as solid waste handling to improve cleanliness and enhance awareness of households’ responsibilities in Indian cities is concerned.

Motivation

There was the Industrial Revolution in Europe, followed by the Automobile Revolution in the early-to-mid 20th century. The Green and White ones followed after that in the Asian countries. The IT and telecom revolution has transformed lifestyles in the last two decades. After having nourished ourselves with the bounties of Mother Earth, it is time to give back, be grateful and conserve the ‘Gaia’ who has nurtured life over the years. Worshipping the Earth as a goddess may be pagan, but it entails something more than paeans and songs, flowers and rituals. For holistic well-being, man needs to have harmonious relations with not just his fellow-humans, but also the environment as a whole – for what he does to the air, water and soil, affects him in the longer run! Solid waste engineering and management has gained prominence as a field of engineering in many parts of the world. The First World has surged ahead with the ‘translation from the drawing board to the street’ but countries like India are still lagging behind…woefully.

This article is a heartfelt attempt to get across the message to readers – there are wonderful things we can learn from the West to enhance our ‘well-being’. Most certainly, that discounts some undesirables which the youth in India these days mistake as signs of ‘development’. One such wonderful thing is the way the European countries handle their solid wastes – not just at the institutional level but even down to the domestic levels. (See photographs from Norway and the CzechRepublic which accompany the text) Yes, there is no ‘one size fits all’, and everything that is good for the West, may not be so for Indians. But writing off anything and everything truly wonderful, that demands concerted efforts, time and patience as not suitable to the Indian context is nothing but laziness.

Figure 1: Recycle bins in Oslo (left) and Prague (right)

Health benefits apart, proper solid waste management endows man with better control over the scarce and fast-depleting resources on which he has been thriving, enhances cleanliness, and results in socio-economic benefits in the medium to longer-term. In other words, multiple well-being benefits!

Modus operandi followed

This writer communicated with randomly-selected friends and acquaintances to elicit their viewpoints about what ails Indian cities as far as efficient solid waste management a la the First World countries is concerned.

The questionnaire which was despatched sought qualitative responses; and carried the following questions:

• Do you think that the attitude of Indians towards garbage handling and disposal will improve and the realization that things are not 'wastes' until and unless their recyclability is reduced to nil, will set in?
• In the First World countries, garbage cans are segmented into 'Paper', Metal, Plastics etc, for easy handling and subsequent despatch to respective recycling centres. In India, more often than not, everything is heaped up and left to the rag-pickers to sort out. Do you think adopting the European pattern of segmentation will affect livelihoods of the rag-pickers? Is this a matter of concern for that matter?
• Even at homes in Europe, garbage is segmented – in Norway for instance, dustbins at home have 3 compartments for food waste, paper and plastics/metal! Can this catch up in India in the near future in your opinion?
• Your personal views on the role of the municipalities in India in encouraging best practices in this regard. Are they laggards?

Responses streamed in quickly, in a matter of 2-3 days, and that explains the importance that wastes handling has assumed over the years in the minds of people, which is very encouraging. Most of the respondents belong to the 25-38 age group – the present generation which is concerned about the future for its progeny. A generation, which has come to believe firmly in the concept of Sustainable Development, for well-being now and as long as possible into the future. The respondents belong to a diverse gamut of educational and professional backgrounds, hail from different parts of India, and some are currently non-resident Indians who have observed the status of waste handling in the west and pine for a change of the status quo in India.

Discussions

I found it heartening to see little kids in Germany keep the chocolate wrappers in the little pockets of their jeans and offload the pockets at the nearest dustbin. Kids about 2 feet tall would look up and read the signs on the dustbin compartments with their parents admiring them for the same, and would feel overjoyed when they would spot the word ‘Papier’ into which they would then deposit the paper wrappers. They certainly seemed very mature for their age. In fact, in Germany which is a pioneer in this regard, there are separate compartments for even different colours of glass bottles! It pains to see kids throwing the wrappers here, there and everywhere in India.That is just one small difference which discerning readers would observe – a smallbut important chapter in ‘The Tale of Two Worlds’.

Talking of little children, this would lead us to some like-minded responses. Sunand Sreeramachandran, an environmental engineer who hails from Kochi and works in Singapore believes that awareness programmes can help, but only to some extent. He is however confident that focusing on the school-children in India who are the ‘future of the nation’ would be an effective approach to improving the situation. Introducing waste handling concepts in the school syllabus (in Community Living for instances, which some schools have, as a subject) is the need of the hour, according to him. VarshitaShukla, an Events and Arts Consultant from Noida, fully agrees. Tajinder Bagga, a very discerning management graduate from Noida is optimistic as well and feels that the western approach to solid waste handling can be made to catch up if a mindset change can be brought about, though he admits that it will be far from easy. Like Sunand, he also advocates a ‘grassroots’ approach – from kids in schools – and believes that it would then percolate to the adults as well. (A bottom-up approach, should one say?).All are of the firm belief that the attitude change has to percolate from the bottom to the top!And these days, parents are more eager to learn from their children.

When I explained to some academics in Norway how the rag-pickers in India earn a living by sorting out garbage from dumping grounds, they commented that it was the most efficient way out – with social, economic and environmental benefits all happening at the same time wonderfully. Hence, this writer wanted to know from the respondents if pre-sorting by households would deprive rag-pickers of their livelihoods. A former resident of New Mumbai who is now in New York in the US of A and does not wish to be identified(let us call her Mrs P), believes that for every rag-picker, three such could be ‘employed’, each specializing in a different area – different type of waste in other words. This would create more jobs and provide income for more families in big cities which subsist on the income derived from sorting and selling recoverable wastes with residual value. However, she emphasizes that each household has to feel accountable for the wastes it generates, and not make the rag-picker wholly accountable by passing the buck. Sunand agrees when he comments that municipalities can take the initiative in organizing the rag-pickers’ job by issuing an ‘operating licence’ to them, train them in better work practices and audit the sites at which they operate at regular intervals to determine the standard of work. Most certainly, even having rag pickers on their payroll will save the municipalities a lot of costs otherwise incurred in incineration and other disposal options, and generate income by the sale of recyclable wastes to authorized recycling centres. Tajinder feels that this will in fact improve the productivity of rag-pickers as they can be trained to sort out card paper from the paper compartments, for instance, or polyethylene covers or polystyrene cups and plates from the plastics compartments and so on – the ‘specialization’ which Mrs P refers to. Varshita says that this is entirely the responsibility of the Government, while adding that systematic sorting and despatch centres also need to be set up at strategic locations, and industries need to be taken into the loop to play a role in accepting the recovered materials as raw materials.

About the Indian attitude to waste handling and garbage disposal, Jaishankar, a marketing professional in the media in Mumbai, terms Indians as ‘lazy’ to take initiatives. Varshita is realistic about the change of attitude for the better, but observes that ‘how and when is the question.’ In other words, someone needs to take the initiative. Mrs P believes that NGOs would play a role in generating awareness and also initiating implementation, while Sunand is of the opinion that the MNCs which are setting up bases in India would do it as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility. Tajinder quips in with- ‘The typical mentality is that we want our immediate surroundings- houses, colonies/ localitiesto be clean andhave never worried about what happens to that dump once it leaves our eyesight.’ In other words, the responsibility for a ‘cradle to grave’ management is yet to entrench itself in the hearts and minds of Indian households. Mrs P puts a finger on the ‘Jack-in-the-Box’ syndrome. She feels that when a deprived society suddenly has it all owing to a rapid rise in purchasing power and standard of living, it wants to get more and more, and forgets overnight what it is to subsist on optimal resources and see value in wastes. She means possibly that as more and more people in India emerge out of their lower middle class and middle class status to middle class and upper middle class respectively, the traditional ways of handling resources and valuing them start seeming retrogressive – especially with the ‘Eat, drink and make merry for tomorrow we die’ mentality seeping strong and deep into Indian psyches of late. Sunand paints a grim picture when he says it would be very difficult to change the attitude of the collective. Dr Amiya Kumar Sahu of the National Solid Waste Association of India, believes that it would take India another 50 years to implement a sound waste-handling system (read the sidebar interview)

Suggestions and the road ahead

On the role municipalities would have to play in bringing about this ‘Revolution’, the respondents had diverse viewpoints – optimistic, cynical, prescriptive et al. Jaishankar blames the staff of the Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation who refused to take on extra responsibilities (emptying bins twice a day) if they would not be compensated adequately. Here, it would be worthwhile to point out that citizens are deterred at times by the laxity of the municipality officials. That is why Tajinder calls for a cooperative effort and insists that a lot of commitment can be elicited from the rag-pickers if their role could be transformed from the informal to the formal, so to say. Varshita is a bit despondent about the laxity of the municipalities and believes that they need to buck up. Mrs P blames several vested interests which impede implementation of policies and measures which are meant for the good of the collective. A former resident of New Delhi, now based in Boston in the USA simplifies the whole discussion by stating that people in the western nations are somehow interested in abiding by the law, while Indians seem to get some kind of vicarious pleasure when they break the law. Jaishankar points out that even after the Government has set about restricting use of plastic covers (paper and more durable cloth bags are a better option), some vendors still go about using the same – prompted reportedly by some imaginary fear of losing business otherwise!

When I thought aloud about initiating some pilot projects with newly designed dustbins to study responses and actually measure the impact of awareness creation and education on the attitude of individual citizens, in big cities in the country, a colleague in Norway observed – Good idea, but even if it works for the first week, how would you ensure that the municipalities would be prompt enough to maintain the optimism and confidence of the citizens, if it matures from pilot scale to full-scale? Stumbling blocks which almost everyone will have in mind, in a big and cumbersome democracy. However, there are saving graces as well. Some hill-stations and tourist destinations have been setting examples. Exotically-designed waste ‘huts’ to segment wastes into two broad categories – recyclable materials and biodegradable materials (with fertilizer and/or energy value) as seen in the picture from Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh), are being used.

Trash-huts in Kasauli, a hill-station town in North India

If the collective will of the people prevails, and if we do not tolerate rubbish (pun intended!) and bad governance, then nobody can force us to stay under the conditions in which we live today.Clean homes are fine, but every citizen needs to think beyond this narrow domain. We are thinking of clean society, clean cities and towns and a clean country today, and that means we cannot afford to just look at our homes and ignore the surroundings, as this writer’s mother points out in a telephonic conversation.

Gear up, fellow Indians, what’s stopping you all?

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INTERVIEW______

‘It would take India 50 years to implement a sound European-style waste segregation system’

Dr Amiya Kumar Sahu is the President of the National Solid Waste Association of India. He comments on the status of waste management in India in this e-mail interaction with the writer.

1. Compared to Europe, where dustbins stand out by their design to separate paper, metals and plastics from food wastes, in India, garbage handling is yet in a primitive stage. Your views on adopting the European style dustbins to facilitate easy separation and recycling?

You must be aware that in India, dustbins are not specially designed to segregate different kinds of wastes like paper, glass, metals, plastic etc. The idea perhaps is not feasible in the country, since till date we have been trying to motivate / educate public to segregate dry and wet wastes. The attempt to make people aware about segregation has completely failed. In such a scenario, it is difficult to expect that European-style segmented dustbins could be introduced into the system. The worst part is that dustbins are being stolen a few days after they are put in place. I think it would take a country like India another 50 years to implement this system.

2. Is there something in the public psyche which may not make this a successful initiative on the part of the municipalities?

Yes, I agree with you that lack of public participation is the main obstacle in efficient solid waste management. Municipalities in India are managed by corporators, as would be the case in a democracy like ours. These politicians lack the willpower to set the ball rolling on initiatives like the one we are discussing. The bureaucracy, besides, has its own limitations. However, public participation has proved to be successful in some areas of Mumbai to a very limited extent.

3. General comments on the awareness of 'recycling' in the Indian mindset. How would you compare it with the same in the West?

Waste recycling is happening in India, but it is not being carried out in an organised and professional manner.

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(The writerwishes to thank all the respondents for their support with their elaborate viewpoints. The writer is a Researcher in Industrial Ecology at the NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology)