Status of Recycling and Ecomark Legislation in India

1
Status of Recycling and Ecomark Legislation in
India

• Almitra H. Patel
• Member, Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste
  Management in Class 1 Cities
• in India
• R02 February 2002

2
Indians have forgotten their Eco Heritage

• Since millennia, Indians have composted
  wet waste to return nutrients to the soil.
  Stable-straw and food waste goes into village
  pits and emptied the compost on the land each
  monsoon. This maintained soil vitality.
•  
• Now heavy subsidies for urea and chemical
  fertilizer have slowly killed this practice.
•  

3
Green Revolution and Environmental Degradation

• Farmers were prosperous before the green
  revolution, which has slowly made 11.6 million
  hectares of our soils barren and alkaline or
  saline.
• City wastes, once largely biodegradable, were
  carted to outlying farms for compost heaps.
• This is unviable now since plastics came into
  use, because thin plastic carry-bags affect
  germination and water-penetration into soil.
•  

4
Valuable Organic Manure is wasted

• City wastes end up open-dumped in low-lying
  areas, along radial roads or in storm-drains.
•  
• This is a national waste. India has a
  shortfall of 6 million tons a year of organic
  manures, which compost from our largest cities
  can easily provide.

5
Composting in India

• Bulk composting, first promoted in 1944,
  failed miserably in 1979 when Western-style
  sorting-before-composting equipment was tried.
•  
• Western waste has only 16-24 wet food waste
  and is free-flowing. Indian waste is 50-80 wet
  waste, and is compact and unsortable in bulk,
  with little left to recycle after waste-pickers
  have searched for a livelihood in the waste.

6
The solution

• Only in the 90s has composting of mixed
  wastes, as-is, followed by sieving, provided a
  viable solution .
• Addition of either 5 cowdung slurry or
  commercial biocultures speeds up the process

7
Public Interest Litigation

• Public Interest Litigation against open
  dumping of garbage led to formation of a Supreme
  Court Committee for Solid Waste Management.
•  
• The Committees Report led to the Ministry of
  Environments Municipal Solid Waste (Management
  Handling) Rules 2000.

8
Recommendations

• Source-separation of dry wet waste
• Doorstep collection of wet waste, for
• Composting bio-degradables as the first option
  
• Recyclables left to the informal sector
• Landfilling only compost rejects inerts.

9
MSW Rules

• The Rules also direct cities to promote
  recycling or reuse of segregated materials and
  ensure community participation in waste
  segregation.

10
Indian Habits

• Indians are resource-conserving and frugal.
• We sell newspapers, bottles and tins to
  doorstep waste-buyers and re-use a lot,
  discarding little.

11
We progress

• We generate only 50-100 gms of
  non-biodegradable waste per capita per day.
• Sadly, this small ecological footprint is seen
  as backward or under-developed.
•  
• So in our 35 cities of over 1-million
  population, dry waste levels are approaching
  Western levels of over 1kg per capita per day.

12
Waste Pickers are us

• Waste-picking at street bins and dumps already
  supports about 1 of large cities populations,
  and always the neediest ones.
•  
• Source-separation will make cleaner streams of
  dry waste available for processing.

13
Opportunities in Waste

• With 65 of Indias billion-plus humans living
  in urban areas, this presents a golden
  opportunity for suppliers of simple low-cost
  decentralized recycling processes and equipment.
•  

14
And those who seize the opportunity

• Vivendi has a long-term contract to collect
  waste from 30 of Chennai (Madras).
•  
• At Navi Mumbai (Near Bombay) a Canadian
  composting bioculture is being promoted.

15
and others

• Japans E M is now being tried in Pune to
  compost mixed waste without heap-turning.
• Tetrapak has finally helped set up a producer
  of hardboard, only from post-producer waste.
•  

16
But much remains to be done

• PET bottles in the millions, for mineral
  water, Coke or Pepsi are another uncollected
  nuisance. Only post-producer waste is being
  recycled now.
•  
• Recyclable is meaningless unless Recycling
  is actually done!

17
Multi-Nationals

• It is a moral tragedy that Multi-National
  Companies can get away with cheap-and-dirty
  practices that their home countries stopped
  tolerating over a decade ago.
• Their lack of social conscience forces urban
  India to pay, in filth or city taxes, for the
  problems created by a one-time-use culture.

18
A start

• A new start-up in Pune plans to turn PET,
  Tetra-paks and mixed plastic wastes to hardboard,
  furniture or shapes, and use post-consumer waste
  as well.
• But what about the recyclable wastes
• of 280 million of us???

19
Thin Plastic Bags

• Thin plastic carry-bags are the bane of India.
  
•  
• They are uneconomical to collect and recycle.
  A minimum-20-micron rule has not helped.
•  
• So they lie around, clog drains cause
  floods.

20
Menace of Thin Plastic

• Food-waste thrown out in thin plastic bags
  attracts cows to uncleared street-bins. These
  bags in their stomachs kill a few cows. They are
  also a serious danger to marine life.
•  
• Bangla Desh may already have a countrywide
  ban in place on their production and use.

21
A useful burial for bags

• One recycler hopes to raise the street price of
  thin carry-bags high enough to gather them in for
  shredding and blowing into hot-mix plants for
  waterproof bitumen for greatly improved road
  life.

22
Styrofoam

• Styrofoam in the food industry is not recycled
  yet and is an unsolved menace. Its use in bulky
  packaging for computers consumer durables is
  another burden.

23
How R02 can help

• . India urgently needs R02 help with packaging
  policy concepts and dissemination of legal
  require-ments like those of EU and North
  Americas

24
Eco-Mark

• Voluntary compliance has not worked with us.
• Our voluntary Eco-Mark defined criteria for 14
  sectors soaps, detergents and paper in 1992,
• Paints, oils, packaging batteries in 1995.

25
But who cares?

• The only Indian firm to seek an Eco-Mark, for
  its detergents, was made to withdraw its
  application when it teamed up with Proctor
  Gamble !
•  
• This is a very short-sighted policy.

26
Eco-Goodwill

• Indians are now highly aware of eco-issues,
  and city dwellers are increasingly using the
  courts to enforce responsible behaviour.
•  
• Multi-nationals, and their recycling partners,
  who are the first to adopt effective take-back
  policies for post -consumer packaging will earn
  enormous goodwill to improve their brand image.

27
And some fun suggestions

• Indians are crazy about cricket and
  film-stars. PETcore-suggested take-back
  lotteries will cost little and gain huge
  publicity. Have fun !

28
Thank you!

• All suggestions and comments are welcome.
• almitrapatel_at_rediffmail.com