Why we need to pay to manage our waste

[Music]

i’d like to share with you two stories

and the first story is about anand

a local scrap dealer i live

in an apartment in bangalore and every

sunday

um ananth comes into our apartment and

sets up sister’s crab shop

outside our gate and then he goes to

various different households

picks up newspaper

carton boxes plastic and he pays

the household for this material brings

the waste

back to this little scrap shop and then

finally

at the end of the day all of this waste

goes

aggregates and then gets sold out to a

recycler

now on the face of it it may seem like a

win

for all but actually it’s not a win for

anand

and i as an entrepreneur know that

because the revenues that he gets

from the sale of this crap will

barely meet all his operational costs

and will barely give him a slim

margin as remuneration for himself

he will also have his wife and his child

in the business because he doesn’t have

to pay them a salary

and even if he could afford an assistant

he would barely be able to pay this

assistant

fair wages so in 21st

century india we have to recognize this

model for what it is

it is an exploitative model and just

because middle class india wants to be

paid for newspapers

we have a system which really encourages

social injustice it encourages

children in the system and it hardly

takes care of our waste

problem because actually this kind of

scrap

is barely two percent of the total waste

that we generate in our homes or in our

offices

my second story is about my journey

in waste and my relationship with waste

so i was just out of college in the

mid-80s

and studied german and therefore decided

that i would like to be a tour guide

and use my language skills so i travel

through the country with my german

tourists

all of us very happy because india is

this great country

wonderful art architecture people

cuisine and then there was this defining

moment one day in madurai outside the

meenakshi temple

we were all awestruck by this you know

the

huge gateways people prayers

and all of that tourists taking pictures

of the temple

and then there was this one tourist who

went slightly

at the side and started taking pictures

of all the waste

and the dumb and you know the ugly sight

around it

and then this tourist turned to me and

said what are you

as a young person going to do about this

side of india now this question stayed

with me for many years in fact it stayed

with me for 20 years and it frustrated

me because

every time i saw garbage you know i felt

helpless

finally when i turned 40 i decided that

this

is the time for me now i would want to

get

into solutions around waste the trigger

for me was also at that time the

municipal solid waste rules

which came out just a year before in

2000

and these municipal solid waste rules

from the government of india

were very aligned with my ideas of what

i wanted to do

it talked of waste as a resource it

talked of

each stakeholder including consumers

actually taking responsibility for their

waste

so that for me was the beginning

of my journey into actually a solution

around waste and i set up this

organization called sahas

sahas in the first few years we worked

as a not-for-profit

uh we focused a lot on reduce which is

the first r

in waste management we also did a lot of

campaigns around

you know less plastic but i knew that

the actual i had to also get into the

real solutions

and that meant um you know taking the

waste of the streets

converting all our waste into resources

so i realized that this solution

now needed a business solution it needed

to be more professional

and that for me was then the start

of transitioning sahas the ngo

to a private limited social enterprise

and so here we are asahas zero waste

which i started in 2013

uh looking to actually bring always

whether it had economic value or not

into a resource um and

today we have three service lines um the

first service line

is around creating a zero waste

campus i mean 40 percent of all our

city’s waste comes from what we call

bulk generators so here you have the

tech parks

the office complexes the malls the

educational institutions

and we actually partner with each of

these as our customers

and then we convert them into zero waste

campuses our second service line is

around

bringing back consumer

waste it could be plastic waste it could

be electronic waste

channeling it through a reverse

logistics system

so that it doesn’t go on our streets it

doesn’t go on to the dump site

it gets recycled and the third service

line

is our sale of products because finally

if we have to

not have waste on our streets the waste

should come back in our homes

and by selling these products we really

close the loop

we bring it back into our homes and we

also demonstrate

a circular economy so let me show you

what happens

in one of our customer locations in

bangalore

and that is the office of microsoft they

have this

big nice campus uh in bangalore

which houses about 3 000 employees

and generates about 1.2 tons

of waste per day they’ve knocked off all

these single-use plastic so

you know there’s less waste on campus

they also have a very good segregation

system

but what we also have is on campus

a unit which manages all their waste

and our team manages that waste so when

the wet waste comes to us

there is a biogas plant on campus and

all the food waste is fed into this

biodigester

from there we get gas that gas is then

piped into the kitchen

and food is cooked there all the dry

waste

comes thank you all the dry waste

comes into the again into our unit

our women do a sorting into paper

plastic metal glass

this waste now moves to our

material recovery facility which is our

factory for waste

and there we have 20 plus categories of

waste in which

you know the materials are sorted so you

will get about six different types of

paper seven different types of plastic

and all of this material is now

a resource all of this material goes

you know into recycling and we then get

paid

by our recyclers but the company also

pays us

a service fee which meets all our

operations

we work like this with several such

campuses and we also work with builders

like rmz in bangalore is a very big

builder

and we partner with all their campuses

to make them

zero waste campus

okay so today sahas manages

80 tons of waste per day

and we have a team strength of 300

250 of them mostly women are our

backbone of our organization they are a

field team

and we make sure because we have a

service fee that we pay them

fair wages so you have them now

move up from you know very low income

households

to a level of being lower middle class

what is the situation in india yeah it

is

in india now we all know the kind of

you know waste garbage problems that we

have around the country

we have 62 million tons of waste being

generated

every year of which just about 70

percent

is actually collected and 20

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processed it’s it’s

scary it’s frightening it’s a big

environment disaster

and why do we have the situation first

of all

no implementation poor enforcement of

the regulations

but also because of our mindsets

a mindset is such now that we look we

don’t understand or we refuse to

recognize the difference

between garbage and waste so whatever

brings us economic value

we will you know manage that but

everything else becomes garbage

so food waste plastic papers all just

mixed

together and when it’s mixed

it can be fixed so this is the waste

that comes on our streets and which

you know we throw our hands up in the

air

waste on the other hand as we’ve seen

is a raw material it’s resource

but it takes extreme effort it takes a

lot of operations

around conversion of this waste

to a resource it takes

investment it takes technology it takes

people

it takes a business model and a business

model

with both a head and a heart so at sahas

we put our heads that’s our zero waste

we’ve put our heads together

to put a professional team in place

to invest in the right technology to

have accountability for every fraction

of waste

till a such time it reaches a recycler

and then the heart is in the

impact because we’re very mindful of all

our waste

going through the cycle we’re very

mindful of our team especially our field

team

being taken care of through at least

fair wages

so it’s always the head and the heart

working together

and that really is the story

of waste to wealth

wealth is really the you know

the uh the kind of resources that we

have the kind of repercussions this

brings in terms of

environment cleaner air cleaner water

wealth is also the social justice system

that we build

now if we want to have and if we value

this wealth

then together we must also commit

collectively

to change and for that to happen

we have to look at adopting

and embracing the polluter pays

principle

so it’s simple all of us are consumers

and all of us through our consumption

patterns

are also polluters so therefore today

as we buy the chips packet and as we buy

that mobile phone

we also have to pay and we as we pay for

the product

we also have to pay for its recycling

and only if we do this will we get

better business models

business models working with the head

and a heart business models

so that anand has the voice

to ask for a service fee when he gives

us this doorstep service

of collecting our newspapers for

recycling

at this point i fondly remember

what nelson mandela said many many years

ago

he said when the head and the heart

work together a formidable force

is created now i do believe that we are

on the brink

of creating a formidable force and it is

this force

that will give us clean air water

soil health social justice

and the ultimate goal of no waste

on our planet thank you

[Music]

you