Techno

We are all now aware that waste is essentially a resource at wrong place. A resource is considered a waste in mundane world when it loses economic or social value. A land is deemed to be wasteland when it ceases to give an economic output. Since British days, meaning of wasteland is unchanged though many wastelands have been put to several productive activities.

Of various wastes, we are really concerned the most with municipal solid waste that is created by all directly or indirectly and is omnipresent in our country.

Solid waste management (SWM) rules, 2016 is the master document of which plastic waste management PWM) rules is one part. The architects of SWM exhorted all stakeholders to segregate solid waste into three parts -wet, dry and hazardous and also urged the local bodies as well as designated collection agencies to move the waste in segregated fashion to specified centres for further management. This apparently wise prescription has been on paper in virtually all places. Our failure as citizens is the fundamental reason for the sorry state that we are in.

In the rules, Supreme Court has empowered all the local authorities to impose and collect penalty for littering and polluting. The authorities have not carried out costing of services for management of segregated and mixed waste. They have also failed to specify and collect penalties that will compel people to follow rules.

Plastics are a part of our life and have single or multiple uses as consumables and as capital goods or parts thereof.  Most of the plastic waste is either dry or easy to dry by all users with little effort.

Government authorities and environmentalists have focused their energy on banning or phasing out single use plastics without an honest and holistic consideration of all factors or options. In the process law makers have focused entire energy on producers of plastic goods or companies using plastic packaging materials giving relative free run to individuals/institutional consumers producing waste and municipal authorities having responsibility for handling waste for a price. Widespread use of of multiplayer pouches or packaging has added to the woes but simple solutions like small bins for collection of such wastes at all the points are not even considered.

All of us have given great thrust to technology based solutions in collection, movement processing and deployment but have failed to immediately support simple entrepreneurial solutions as successfully done in places like Dhoraji of Gujarat.

To sum up, some simple, smart and sensible steps that merit attention are

1. Social, behavioural, economic, educational and environmental campaigns to reward segregation as per SWM rules  and punish mixing of dry, wet and hazardous wastes

2. Creating solutions and business models for converting wet food, kitchen and animal water into biogas and organic fertiliser

3. Separation of dry waste into different silos manually or mechanically for value added products of plastics, paper, glass or metals.

4. Considering plastic waste more of a logistics issue to devise tools and techniques for efficient management

5. Mainstreaming bin culture everywhere to stop littering in public places

6. Urging all opinion makers to talk about “litter free India”

7. Supporting waste and circular economy businesses through fair, simple, enabling and high priority ecosystem

8. Showing local authorities a new revenue source through penalties that are based on end to end costs and externalities relating to pollution  (Proper application of “polluter pays principle”)

S B Dangayach
Founder Trustee
Innovative Thought Forum
www.itf-india.com
sbdangayach@gmail.com

Waste is resource at wrong place .Waste is an integral part of all human, animal, vegetable and enterprise kingdoms. Business is generally synonymous with wealth creation and hence waste to wealth creation can be termed as waste business.

The world is so beautifully created that each and every waste is convertible into a resource either through a natural process or through a variety of technological processes. Recent buzz of “circular economy “captures a part of this unseen truth and exhorts all to convert organic waste into energy and fertilisers while to subject inorganic waste to suitable technological process to convert into a resource . To balance our development plans with resource constraints and environmental imperatives, we have to go for 5 R approach -reduce, recycle, reuse, recover and repurpose.

While creating and delivering a course on “Waste business management” at IIMA many years back, I realised big businesses that are thriving and that fall in the domain of waste businesses. To briefly recapitulate, a few are shining examples of waste businesses

• Leather depending on hides of dead animals
• Wool based on animal hair
• Gelatin based on bones
• Corrugated boxes based on recycled paper and biomass
• Recycled paper based on paper scrap
• Brass parts based on brass scrap
• Ship breaking based on discarded ships
• Fly ash building materials based on waste  from thermal power plants
• Recycled  metals  based on scraps
• Wigs and beauty products based on human hair
• Cushioning materials , fibres , fabrics, garments, geosynthetics based on PET waste
• Recycled and upcycled plastic products for variety of uses

Climate change -need for concrete action on many fronts
Climate change threat is appearing imminent  demanding decarbonisation and GHG reduction . Though we came up with National action plan on climate change (NAPCC) over ten years ago, our progress is slow on many fronts .Demand side management for  all resources like energy, water and materials is still to gain traction though this alone can reduce GHG and carbon emissions. Gap between policy and action on ground is clear from the fact Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) 2017 is yet to be notified amd adopted in Gujarat though built environment or buildings consume over 50% of all power.

Similar gaps are evident in other mandates or directives from MOEF or others.
Government has been constantly working to evolve proper rules .As individuals or enterprises, we are into habit of ignoring or bypassing these laws or rules for short term gain that is sure to be a big burden on all of us.  Recent policy in Gujarat for use of treated sewage for use in industries or power plants is yet to take off in a big way due to several implementation issues.

Waste businesses -Huge untapped opportunities for entrepreneurs 
Despite all constraints, waste business opportunities are now humongous and have potential to contribute handsomely to GDP .I had the delight to deliver keynote address on “waste to wealth opportunities” on occasion of silver jubilee of Laghu Udyog Bharati in Nagpur in 2019 that can be seen on YouTube. If some of these waste business opportunities are tapped, we will achieve all goals under climate change mitigation plans while promoting all round growth in employment and economy. A few low hanging fruits

• Use of  fly ash in agriculture and forests to boost productivity by 15-20 % as well as soil health
• Conversion  of Gobar and animal manures into biogas /power  and organic fertilisers to reduce dependency on imports while improving soil health
• Conversion of food and kitchen waste into Biogas and organic fertiliser as per MSW rules to improve environment and generate wealth
• Recovery of resources from  e waste and other industrial wastes
• Treatment and reuse of Wastewater from industries now feasible with host of technologies
• Waste processing clusters of Dhoraji type for plastics , Moradabad for e waste or Alang for ship breaking on wastelands available in plenty all over the country
• Conversion of non recyclable industrial wastes into building and infrastructure products
• Promotion of PPP for micro and small enterprises in water , sewage , MSW etc
• Facility management services
• Waste logistics from end to end
• Skilling for waste management and green jobs
• Encouraging and facilitating all types of business models like ESCO (energy saving companies) or Pay as use
• Creation of waste exchanges for healthy trading and business
• Short term leasing of wastelands parcels to all eligible enterprises or individuals for designated uses

Conclusions
Waste businesses are profitable and a part of Cleantech that is going to drive world economy now. Environment, climate change, global warming, health etc are going to dominate our lives and thus properly crafted and executed business models will create additional wealth as well employment. There are many opportunities like biogas and organic fertiliser from animal, human, food, vegetable and organic wastes that are highly profitable without any subsidy but have not enthused business houses or new enterprises due largely to poor awareness . Proper costing of all services like water supply, sewage treatment services, environmental treatment etc with use of technology for recovering all charges from polluters will give India a booster in quest of 5 trillion dollar economy target. As seen many times, a conducive and helpful framework rather than subsidy driven model will deliver sustainable and superior results.