Circular economy is by the poor

I am looking at massive mounds of garbage — but with a difference. This garbage — from your and my house and countless others — has been sorted, segregated and made into almost neat piles of different stuff. I am at what can be called Asia’s largest wholesale market for junk — located in Delhi’s Tikri Kalan — obviously on the outskirts of the city, because our waste must be out of sight, out of mind. We then go to the Haryana side of the market, located in Bahadurgarh district, adjoining Delhi. Here again, there are mounds and mounds of sorted and unsorted garbage. While the Delhi market is formal in some ways, the land has been provided by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA); the Haryana side is located on agricultural land.

I ask farmers why they have leased their land for this waste trade. They point their fingers at development, ironically called Modern Industrial Estate, located near their fields. Here industry, they say, has pumped industrial discharge into the ground through reverse boring. As a result, our groundwater is contaminated and full of chemicals. Now agriculture is not possible. We could see chimneys and smoke from this “Modern” ground. Pollution Control Board officials, who were with us, said, “Give us proof and we will close down units that do reverse boring.” It was a rhetorical question — they did not really want the answer. Just near the farms and coming from the factories we could smell and see the massive drain full of stink and dirt. The same Haryana government has stipulated that its pollution board officials can only “inspect” a unit once in five years. Really rhetorical! 

So, the cycle has closed. This could well be called the perverse circular economy of our times — we produce waste, destroy land and livelihoods, and then provide no option to the very poor but to make a business out of the same waste we have created and dumped.

I was there with the chairman of the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) as we want to understand the steps taken to ensure that waste is not burnt in the open. The last time the chairman, Bhure Lal, had visited the area, he had found massive (this is an understatement) quantities of discarded waste in the Mundka plastic factory area as well as in Tikri. He directed this waste be lifted and taken to an energy plant for controlled burning. It made a huge difference in the last winter season. 

This time, there was much less “waste” in the open. As the traders informed us, waste is a resource. They cannot afford to let it be burnt. But it is also a fact that there is waste that cannot be recycled — for all of us who need and like to buy shoes, one green tip is that “uppers” cannot be recycled. They have to be burnt. There are other items like this, including multi-layered plastic; what we consume and throw every time, we eat processed food packed in shiny and indestructible plastic.

But it is also undisputable that these markets, in Tikri and in Bahadurgarh, which employ the poorest of the poor, are the reasons why we are not (yet) drowning in our own waste. These markets are built on the labour of the poor, who rummage through our waste, pick up the pieces of any value, and then sell it to the first collector, who then sells it on to the next, and so on. It is an informal trade but extremely well organised. I was told that the market sorts out some 2,000 products from the waste and the value of each is Rs 5-50 per kg. The trade pays the goods and services tax — earlier the government has imposed a ridiculous 18 per cent, but has now corrected it to 5 per cent. So, the government earns from this trade, which should, by all logic, be supported, as it provides a waste to resource business and saves us from building landfill sites, which take valuable land. We know nothing about this business, but we believe it is considered dirty. The municipal corporations will provide land for dumping waste but nothing for its recycling. Where are the spaces for junk shops in our city plans? 

But there is an issue that niggles and eats away at my thoughts. What should be the right model for this waste business? Should we accept the fact that this trade provides livelihoods for the poor so it is good? This would mean that we should use more and reject more. Is this the way ahead? I ask this, not just in the context of Tikri but the world around us. Once China closed its borders on “foreign garbage”, recyclers started looking for countries to sell this waste. Is this the answer to our waste problem? Surely not. Let’s discuss this next fortnight.
 

The writer is at the Centre for Science and Environment

sunita@cseindia.org

Twitter: @sunitanar