Page 26 - Plastics News December2018

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The fate of Plastics in our cities

Priyanka Pulla

Segregation of organic waste from non-biodegradable material at source was made mandatory in April 2016,
but it is yet to catch on
0-year-old Sadashiv looks over his workspace — a hall conditions. To ensure safer working environments, the
5with a conveyor belt in the middle and bins on both professors encouraged residents of an elite neighbourhood
sides. Inside the bins are an assortments of refuse: empty to segregate their trash. This eventually led to the
milk packets, shampoo bottles, and yoghurt containers establishment of a waste-pickers cooperative, which
among them. Each day, about a tonne of such “dry collects garbage from 55% of the city’s households today.
waste” (waste that isn’t biodegradable) arrives, and Mr. Meanwhile, in cities such as Tirunelveli and Suryapet in
Sadashiviah’s team sorts it. Plastic goes into one bin, Telangana, city administrators took up the baton, according
metal into another, while paper goes into yet another. It’s to Utkarsh Patel, a co-author of the ICRIER study.
a tiring job.
Role of waste pickers
Segregation, or the separation of organic waste from
plastic, paper and metal, is the foundation of recycling. In cities like Mumbai, where segregation is extremely
Yet, the vast majority of India’s 8,000 cities and towns low, the informal sector plays a crucial role in keeping
don’t do this. As a result, a million tonnes of plastic waste plastic out of landfills. The sector includes waste pickers,
ends up in landfills and in the environment each year. who riffle through garbage dumps to retrieve plastic, and
‘kabadiwallahs’, or itinerant buyers. “The informal sector
Status of segregation
has been subsidising municipalities in recycling waste for
Segregation at source has been legally required across India years,” says Pinky Chandran, a trustee at Hasiru Dala, a
since April 2016, when the Ministry of Environment, Forests cooperative of waste pickers in Bengaluru. This is why,
and Climate Change notified the Solid Waste Management despite India’s poor record at segregating, the country
rules. Yet, almost three years later, some of the top solid-
waste generators, including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and
Chennai, don’t even have data on segregation, according
to an April 2018 study by the Indian Council for Research
on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).
Among the handful of big cities that do segregate,
Bengaluru and Pune lead, with about 50% segregated at
source. A few small cities perform well too. For example,
Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu segregates 100% of waste, while
Panaji hits about 90%. There are several reasons for the
variability in the level of implementation among cities, says
Megha Shenoy, a researcher at Bengaluru’s Ashoka Trust for
Research in Ecology and the Environment. In Bengaluru and has traditionally been among the largest recyclers of
Pune, segregation began with citizen initiatives. In 2012, polyethylene teraphthalate (PET) — the plastic used in soft-
after Bengaluru’s Maavalipura landfill began overflowing, drink bottles. According to a 2017 study by the National
city resident Kavitha Shankar succeeded in getting Chemical Laboratory Pune, India recycles 90% of its PET
the Karnataka High Court to order the city to enforce waste annually, while the number is 72.1% in Japan and
segregation, and provide DWCCs in every ward. 48.3% in Europe. This is all down to the country’s almost 4
million waste pickers. Once they retrieve the PET, they turn
The Pune story began in the 1990s, with two professors it over to recycling companies, who make items including
at the Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey (SNDT) polyester and denim.
Women’s University. While researching the livelihoods of
waste pickers, they found them to be working in hazardous Along with PET, products made of polyethylene and
polypropylene also find favour with waste pickers.

Plastics News December 2018 26