The Dirty Business of Waste Management in Delhi
February 19th, 2010
I was watching an episode of “Undercover Boss” the other night in which the President of Waste Management (one of the largest solid waste handler in the U.S.) went incognito, to work side-by-side with some of the company’s employees who handle the most gruesome, laborious, and stressful tasks of the business. Watching this episode really got me thinking about waste. For residents of developed countries, our waste is quickly and neatly sequestered from us and our living environments. We put our waste bins on the curb, and during the twilight of the early morning hours, faceless municipal servants arrive in a big, loud truck, and magically, the refuse disappears. With a single flush, raw sewage is removed to the bowels of the underground sewer lines. In America, waste removal and disposal is a finely tuned system, perfected over a couple centuries and transformed into a money-making machine. It is integrated into our public infrastructure and operated by private businesses, yet ironically hidden from sight.
But consider India. In most images of densely packed Indian cities or slums, one of the first things you notice is profuse amounts of garbage strewn over the landscape. One can’t help but wonder why India hasn’t taken more progressive steps to fix this blatant problem. With such huge population densities and burgeoning ingenuity, you’d expect the government to have come up with some sort of solution for this problem. And even if the government didn’t step up to fix the problem, the private sector should see this as an opportunity to make some serious money, right? Click on these links to read some interesting articles on the subject: Article 1, Article 2.
Well, the private sector certainly has stepped up, but not in a corporate sense. The business of trash is a serious one for many of the poor, and it is a relatively lucrative source of income. According to Bharati Chaturved, author of the article, “Ragpickers: The Bottom Rung in the Waste Trade Ladder,” one out of every 100 residents in Delhi engages in trash recycling. With a population of roughly 12 million, that works out to be about 120,000 residents (some estimate as many as 150,000) that serve and create the market for waste processing and recycling. It is estimated that this ad hoc waste management force saves Delhi’s three municipalities a minimum of $12,000 a day. According to Chaturved, it has also been estimated that a single piece of plastic increases 700% in value from start to finish in the recycling chain before it is reprocessed!
However the work of a “rag-picker” is extremely demanding. Most live in slums or dust bins with little or no access to clean water and food. Rag-pickers are very territorial, and they fiercely guard their scavenging areas. Most of them wake up by 4 am before all the good pieces of trash are plucked away by competitors. In areas that have the most lucrative trash bins and streets, middlemen often extort bribes from pickers in order to allow them unfettered access to the bins or alley ways. If caught by the police, they are sometimes beaten or taken into custody and assigned to cleaning the police stations. Some get lucky enough to get access to landfills, the gold mines for recyclable materials, and they have to often pay hefty bribes.
Once the pickers get the trash, it must be cleaned and dried properly or they will not be able to sell it to a middle man. If the cleaned material is too wet, or too dirty, they stand to lose a huge percentage of the redemption price or not be able to redeem the material at all. Allergies, cuts, respiratory ailments, and exposure to deadly biohazards are the primary risks associated with this type of work. Another article titled “The Human Scale of Recycling in India” by K-Fai Steele, also discusses some behind-the-scenes details of this informal waste management system. Steele writes that many of the trash pickers dig through piles of rotting food, dirt, and human excrement to gather the paper, plastic, glass, and metal scraps. While this sounds repulsive and desperate, this industry processes 59% of Delhi’s waste and supports the livelihood of countless families.
So what do you think about Delhi’s waste management system? What do you think would happen if the city were to implement a more efficient, highly industrialized and systematized method of waste management? How would it affect the quality of life for all of the city’s citizens? What would it do to the economy? Do you think this is an efficient way to handle recycling in a big city like Delhi? I am curious to see what you think the long range net effects would be if Delhi adopted a waste management approach like that in the U.S. Would it do more harm than good?
-Erika Bylund
Entry Filed under: 2010 Student Blogs, India, Misc.
8 Comments Add your own
1. Suruchi chopra | February 20th, 2010 at 6:10 am
Hi,
I really liked your article. I live in Delhi and as you said there is an enormous amount of trash visible daily which I believe provides a large scope for private players. At one time even I used to wonder why aren’t private organisations coming up to do something for this. When I researched on this, I found out that there are organisations-both for profit and not-for-profit doing their bit in waste management, but it’s not enough. The bigger recyclers also operate on very large scales and get their raw materials from the informal sector and dealers.
On your question at the end- It’s true that the conditions of the rag-pickers is pitiable but they could do good if provided with better management, that can come with private organisations. These orgs can employ such people at low costs, provide them with basic facilities and security to uplift them and in turn they can turn out to be a valuable resource as not many agree to do doing dirty jobs in a society like ours.
2. Phil Hamer | February 22nd, 2010 at 12:50 am
For countries like India and China, an industrialized and automated cleanup system like ours would only take jobs from thousands of poor peasants who are willing to work hard and get dirty to feed themselves. However, your description of the situation in India doesn’t seem ideal.
This is one area where I think China is onto something, and India could learn from their neighbor. The Chinese government employs its own “rag-pickers” and cuts out the middleman in recycling. In most cities in China you find them everywhere. They wear simple blue uniforms, long gloves, straw hats to keep the sun out of their face, and carry makeshift brooms made from plant trimmings. They painstakingly separate every piece of trash: food, paper, chopsticks, plastic, metal, etc. They reach into every trash can and sweep every piece of trash from the street. Not one article of garbage goes unsorted, everything recyclable gets recycled, and thousands of otherwise jobless workers are making (at least some) money. After 7:00 PM when the workers go home to their families, the streets become filthy with litter again, but then in the morning, once they start working, the streets become spotless. It’s amazing!
3. Jordan Wente | February 27th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Phil that sounds like a much more efficient way of handing the current waste management system yet I still do not think it quite addresses the problem. Like you said, the streets just continue to get filthy with litter again the next day. The ideal system would incorporate the method you described into a bigger system that would discourage the disposal of trash by means of littering. If there was a more advanced option or waste management system available to tackle some of these issues it could incentivize people not to litter in the first place. This may take jobs from peasants but in the grand scheme of things I think it would be more beneficial to them. A waste management system also has the potential to create more jobs for these citizens in a safer, healthier and more profitable environment for “rag pickers” and the community.
Although I am surprised that a private company has not attacked the problem on a large scale, I think there is also a cultural aspect associated with the problem. Change depends on how the problem is viewed. It seems that “rag pickers” are not out to clean up the waste management problems but instead out to collect any materials that may be profitable to them. It is interesting that the concept of recycling came before the broader issue of waste management. It makes me wonder if a system created on the basis of recycling, such as India, rather than sanitation issues, for example the US, will enable India to create a more environmentally friendly approach to waste management? In the United States the reasons for creating a waste management system were based on sanitation issues. It was only later that recycling was integrated in to the system. Creating a system with these issues in mind might create more positive net effects than seen in the US.
On a similar note, last quarter Danielle Steussy wrote a blog post that I found interesting. The post was about an entrepreneurial venture that took advantage of the waste management issue in India. The idea behind it was to use recycled plastics to create a mixture that would then be used to create roads. Maybe larger scale efforts from private organizations are not that far away.
4. William Ary | March 1st, 2010 at 12:59 pm
I think the recycling in India is the harsh but effective reality of an unregulated capitalist society. Some people are poor enough to do any kind of work. And they do it well. I don’t think that the US recycles anywhere near 59% of its refuse, so this system may actually be more effective. I also like that they work in the open to clean up the cities. In the US, the subterranean/surreptitious nature of waste processing prevents people from seeing the effects of their living choices and making informed decisions. We simply don’t see where our trash goes and what happens to it afterward. I think we can simplify our attempts to waste less by discovering either recyclable ways to package/build things or more effective ways of separating trash into its component materials for reuse or release (safely) into the environment.
5. Frederick Peemoeller | March 1st, 2010 at 10:07 pm
I think if the system isn’t broke, don’t fix it. Peasants are willing to sift through the garbage, and there is productivity from their efforts. Once it doesn’t prove to be financially viable for peasants to garbage pick, then there is a problem that needs to be fixed. If anything should be done, Phil’s comment for the government to help fund garbage pickers makes the most sense in my opinion.
As the standard of living increases in India, a waste management system may be more viable than it is now. I think a solution will be for people to have to pay for their own garbage. Making people pay for their own garbage per trash can will limit garbage , but the government must intervene and create strict penalties for littering. The private sector could make a profit on the venture , but this should only be used in higher class areas since lower class people could never pay for the use.
6. Jeff | March 18th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Why is it called waste management? I think it should be called resource management. When people finally get it through their heads that there is nothing on the planet that can be wasted, we’ll all be more enlightened. Everything that is dug up, processed, assembled, or touched has an embodied energy. That’s what it costs to get it into the form we need. Littering is adding cost to the resource because it requires people to walk around, package it and take it to a drop off point. I think the system that we use in the US where we do a minimal sort of our trash, then have it picked up would cost society less. The rag pickers could still do the same job, but probably be able to do so more efficiently and in a safer environment.
7. Rajiv sainy | April 6th, 2010 at 5:25 am
i am doing P.G.D.B.M from N.I.M.T(international business). i want do job/training in delhi& abroad.
8. Lisa Victoria Waller | November 2nd, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Thank you for the article. I have been to Delhi one time and will go back in 2011 and probably each year thereafter.
The one element of Delhi that I recognized was the emmesen waste and garbage everywhere.
Delhi’s dependance to use garbage pickers as a unpaid workforce is not acceptable.
However, It is hard to take work away from those that do not have the means to find work another way; but for the health and sanitation of the city, its people and the cities downstream it must be a better choice to get the garbage off of the streets than to continue to unpaid labor.
Delhi will have to hire a bigger workforce to remove the garbage professionally and then on a larger scale invest in techniques of recycling.
If they are concerned about the population that will be put out of work; they will need to invest in training for those individuals to do new jobs.
We may save many lives by taking the garbage off the streets. And attract new investors to add jobs.
Thank you
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