ReCircle: Young Entrepreneurs Creating a Circular Economy with Waste

May 1, 2024May 4, 2024 ~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ Leave a comment

Heart of Conservation Podcast Ep#36 Show notes (Edited)

Listen or read

0:00: Call of the Collared owlet

0:04: Host: Lalitha Krishnan

I’m Lalitha Krishnan and you’re listening to episode #36 of Heart of Conservation. Today we are going to be talking about how waste management can be a profitable business. Normally when we sort out our waste, it is off our hands and not our problem anymore. But when garbage dumps start growing into hills polluting air quality and spreading disease, we sit up and wonder why nobody is doing anything. I’m speaking to two amazing Clean Tech innovators, Rahul Nainani, Co-founder and CEO and Gurashish Singh, Co-founder and COO at ReCircle, who converted biomining waste into a booming business. It’s not every day we hear success stories of positive change. Let me begin by welcoming Rahul and Gurashish to Heart of Conservation. Thank you both so much for joining me here on this platform today.

1:06:

Guest 1: Rahul Nainani:

Thank you for having both of us.

Guest 2: Gurashish Singh:

Yes…

1:09:

Lalitha Krishnan: My pleasure. So, Rahul, since you are Bombay-based and ReCircle’s headquarters operates out of Bombay, this question is for you. I heard that you both visited the Deonar waste dump which has existed since 1927. It’s the oldest dump in Asia. Legacy waste: waste that is old land fill, inherited waste, not necessarily even created by your generation. So, what did you see in this mammoth garbage pile that inspired both of you to become clean tech innovators? Most people would have run a mile, including me.

via https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/87429/fire-burns-in-mumbai-landfill

1:50:

Rahul Nainani: No, absolutely, Lalitha, I think, I was as ignorant as the rest of us, before we started ReCircle. And having studied finance, nowhere in my mind did I think I’d be working in the waste sector. But I like to believe that, waste and circular economy, is something that just happened to me, and I think that’s for the very right reasons itself. So, we launched in early 2016 under the brand name of RaddiConnect, which is what we rebranded as ReCircle. But just when we were launching, there was this massive fire that took place at the Deonar dump site. You know, there’s this iconic image that NASA took from space where you could see that fire burning even from space. And it went on for a few weeks in fact. And early in our business when we were just launching, the idea was to find, look at what was happening with our base and we were as ignorant as anybody else. It was more of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality. Having lived in Bombay all my life, Deonar was just like, one dump site which you cross on the way to Lonavala. But one fine day when this fire happened, we planned to go down to the dump site and see what went on and why this fire happened itself to start with. So, there were a few things that we found out during this fire. The first thing was that these fires happened regularly. And it’s not just, that one fine day that this escalated. But the only reason in the end, not just us but the entire city woke up is because the wind was blowing towards South Bombay and South Bombay being South Bombay, people started waking up and realising that this was a massive issue. But these fires happen daily. And the dump site, if you look at the map of Mumbai, is pretty much located in the heart of the city, but it has a creek on one side. So generally, when the wind blows towards the creek, you don’t realise the extent of the fire. But this fine day when it was growing towards the city and that’s when we all woke up. The second thing that drove me to take that leap of faith and see how big this problem is and think that we need to work towards a solution was that we worked with an NGO called Apnalaya that works in the Deonar dump sites, in the neighbourhoods surrounding the dump site. And they gave us a very astonishing fact that the average life expectancy of people that just live around the periphery of the dump site–these are again, not the people that work in the dump site, but only live in the slum area next to it–was 38 years of age and, and that was an eye-opening number to me and it helped me realise that if this is impacting the people just living around the downside, how soon is it going to start impacting the rest of the city as well as the rest of the country? This story is not just about Deonar dumpsite in Mumbai, but this is pretty much made with the Ghazipur dump site in Delhi. May be Bangalore, maybe even Kolkata is pretty much the same city, same story across all cities across India. And, together Gurasish and I must have visited more than 50+ dump sites in the country, and the situation is quite dire. So, that helped us realise that of course we need to make an impact in this space. And that’s how our journey began into working towards starting ReCircle.

Rahul Nainani, Co-Founder and CEO, ReCircle

5:12:

Lalitha Krishnan: Wow. God bless you guys, somebody had to do it. Gurashish, maybe you can answer this. So, help me draw a picture of ReCircle’s operation by completing the story. OK? So, I’m a rag picker or a saffai karamchari sorting through a pile of garbage in Deonar. What next? What happens?

5:35:

Gurashish Singh: Overall, let me help you understand how waste flows #1 The lady or the man in the house removes the clean recyclable waste, right? So that’s typically your newspapers and things like that that are sent to a raddhiwalla. Then the house helper–who comes to the house has the first dig at the waste– who will remove bigger cardboard boxes or Bisleri bottles, PET bottles, and things like that. After that, the waste goes to the garbage collector of the building or the person who’s putting the garbage in the garbage truck. Post this, the waste will end up in landfills and oceans. So even though it is a pretty informal supply chain right from the start to the end. One of the most astonishing things is that fortunately, we have a very strong-backbone supply-chain where people are removing waste at so many levels. But the unfortunate scenario, and this is in 90% of the cases, the waste is not segregated. So, if we just segregate the waste, it will make it very easy for this extremely long supply chain of people that are, actually making a living out of the waste that we throw out also. So yeah, that’s actually what happens. And, there is a supply side to the supply chain that works. There are scrap dealers, kabadiwalaas, your house help, the person who is, you know, down in the building collecting the garbage right till that truck reaches your dumping grounds. The bigger problem is people not segregating this waste.

7:31:

Lalitha Krishnan: Thanks for that. Talking of ‘sorting’, one generally hears of sorting garbage into glass, metal, cardboard, wet waste and plastic. In one conversation I heard you mention sorting garbage into 40 categories. I mean I was blown away. Could you share a few examples and which materials are the focus of ReCircle?

7:56:

Gurashish Singh: Sure, let us again start with India, where we’re expected to segregate our garbage into three categories that are dry, wet and hazardous right? And out of the dry waste… if you typically see the four major four or five major categories that are there–paper, glass, plastics, metals, e-waste. In India we are not even supposed to segregate different types of waste. When we travel internationally, we do the paper separately, the glass separately, dry separately, and wet separately. So however, given what is actually supposed to be done in India where we segregate our waste into dry, wet and hazardous, this dry waste then reaches our facilities where we first primarily sort the material into paper, plastics, metals, glass and e-waste. Then, in turn, each of these materials is further segregated. So, say paper is segregated into four categories. That’s white, coloured, corrugated boxes, coloured-corrugated. Your glass is segregated into alcohol bottles, and other glass bottles and then colour-segregated. Plastic belongs to seven different categories, right? That’s number one to number seven. #1 being PET #7 being others. This level is then further categorised into colours, transparent and things like that. And so is e-waste. So, leading to all this, we segregate over 40 different categories of waste. We also connect and segregate multi layer plastics or the 7th category which mainly is the packaging material that is composed of multiple layers of different polymers. And we make sure that this either goes into road making or recycling or energy recovery and waste to energy plants or cement factories, which is all the government-approved way of managing this waste. So, yes, the one category of dry waste that we collect from individuals is then further segregated into 40 categories.

10:11:

Lalitha Krishnan: OK, could you give me an example of what 7-layer packaging is? What product are we talking about?

Gurashish Singh, Co-Founder and COO, ReCircle

10:18:

Gurashish:Multiple layers. An easy example would be probably a packet of any chips that we like to get.

Lalitha Krishnan:

OK.

Gurashish Singh: So, if we notice, the top layer would be plastic, there will be an aluminium layer with it, right? So, there is an aluminium foil if you see it on the other side. This is basically a merging or a combination of multiple polymers and other materials that cannot be recycled. So an easy example is a water bottle which is PET. If we break that down and granulate it, we are going to get PET granules back. But when there are different layers of either different polymers or different materials, the output is never going to be a single material. That’s going to be a mixture of all materials.

11:10:

Lalitha Krishnan: Thanks. Rahul, how many villages, towns and cities does ReCircle reach? And are any of these remote? For instance, do you cover vulnerable areas of India, like the mountainous areas or islands like the Andaman island where there’s really no extra land for dumping garbage? Having been there–and my last podcast guest was a herpetologist who lives in Andaman—he says Andaman island has a landfill now. I mean, there’s nowhere for the garbage to go. It doesn’t come back to the mainland so…

11:45:

Rahul Nainani: Correct. So currently, our operations span over 250+ locations across India covering major cities like Mumbai, Delhi or Bangalore, but also covering tourist locations like Shimla or Haridwar and also, certainly difficult-to-reach locations in the northeastern area which might be in Assam or Meghalaya, where we are actively working on collection of this material. Having visited Andaman island myself, a few years ago, as I’m an avid diver, I did see the need for waste management over there. But how our business model works is that we work with brands, which is a B2B business. So, we work with brands to help them to offset their footprint. So, when I say this, essentially, let’s say we are working with a beverage brand and they’re selling their brand in India. We collect an equivalent amount of beverage bottles on their behalf. Now, while, our mandate for collection of this material comes from the businesses that we work with, we are covering almost 90% plus of the States and Union territories in India. But in certain areas where we need some additional support from brands where we can do the operations like in Andaman, right now, where we are not working. But we know companies that are working over there. We are trying to maximise our footprint as well in terms of collecting from even the harder-to-collect locations. But here my call to the listeners would be that if you are a brand and are looking at consciously making this effort, please do reach out to us. And we would want to work in harder to access locations further as well …to collect material from where it is difficult to collect these resources. But yes, currently we do have a mix of Tier 1, and Tier 2 rural areas as well, where we are actively collecting this material from.

13:38:

Lalitha Krishnan: Good to know. 250 plus locations is quite something. Considering ReCircle’s reach, you’re providing livelihood to a large number of people. How would you say it impacts their lives?

13:55:

Rahul Nainani: Yes. So, just to take one step back, the waste management sector in India, as Gurashish mentioned, is extremely informal and fragmented and it has a lot of moving parts involved. Now our purpose or our vision at ReCircle is to bring along ethical circularity. And, the idea is that while waste is an environmental problem, it’s also a massive people problem because there are nearly 4 million waste pickers or people who make an income out of scavenging waste from landfills and dump sites across India. So, our business model was, in a way where we wanted to empower these people and formalise them as compared to displace them. Because, we very well understand, that without having these people clean up the trash after us, there would be no waste management that would happen in our country at all. So, we work with local scrap dealers, aggregators, and waste collectors that work across the country at these 250-plus locations. We formalise them with the help of where we’re working with them on, health checkup camps… connecting them with government schemes and also eventually working with them on additional sources of income. So, in simplicity, we charge the polluter, which is the brand owner that we work with and we incentivise the collectors that collect this material on our behalf. And with that intent, we’ve directly and indirectly impacted more than 3000+ informal workers. While this is not a big number in the larger context of things, this is where we are currently. At a small stage where and we can do this work. And where either with the help of, you know, social security or with health camp with additional sources of livelihood is where we’ve been able to impact these 3000 plus informal workers that are part of our supply chain. And our vision is to work and increase this number as we scale up our progress in terms of waste recovery. We also want to impact more and more waste pickers in the organisation. We don’t like to call them waste pickers, but we call them ‘saffai saathis’ as there are friends who help us clean up the environment as compared to picking our waste because what is waste for us is a resource for them and they can make a living out of this. So, that’s how our mindset is to personally not call them waste pickers because they’re cleaning after us. We are the waste generators and they are the cleaners. They’re cleaning after us. So, it’s very ironical to call them waste pickers or waste workers in that sense. So, rebranding them as essentially saffai saathis, rebranding waste as a resource to start with, because what’s waste to us is a resource to them and also for our ecosystem. And that’s how we intend to build this inclusive business model where we empower these informal waste collectors as a part of our supply chain as compared to displacing them from the ecosystem.

16:55:

Lalitha Krishnan: Nice. I like that whole positive outlook you have towards your business and to everyone who’s involved. Well, could one of you give us three foul facts about garbage that are India-specific that my listeners may not know?

17:09:

Gurashish: One of the most startling facts that we came across was… did you know that India imports 465 crore plastic bottles annually? We stumbled upon this a decade ago and we found it absolutely unacceptable. If there’s one thing that we don’t have a shortage of in India, that’s waste.

Lalitha Krishnan: Why?

17:41:

Gurashish Singh: The reason for this is two ways. One is that again, going back to one of the first questions you asked me, people do not segregate waste. So a lot of it just ends up in landfills and oceans, right? If we just start segregating our waste, multiple people will remove this and send it to a recycling unit close to wherever they are. So that is one of the one of the astonishing or foul facts as you call it. Secondly, India alone produces a massive amount of 3.4 million tonnes of waste. Again, only 30% of this gets recycled, mainly due to non-segregation of waste. We are the third largest waste generator in the world and if we continue at the same pace, we will be the largest by 2048. That’s the estimate and another one would be a 4 million people make an income out of scavenging waste from landfills and oceans and streets. They are unorganised and unrecognised, and we feel that somewhere they are the only reason for the entire waste recycling and waste infrastructure that is being managed in India as well. So again, it will be a call out to all the listeners here that whoever your waste picker, waste collectors or saffai sathis are, they’re invisible warriors, in this entire shadow supply chain. So, the dignity of work is something that they really deserve.

Lalitha Krishnan: Thanks for that. It’s so true. So could you share three positive facts about garbage that emerges from your business?

19:36:

Rahul Nainani: I think looking at the larger landscape of sustainability and clean tech itself, I feel that I’m extremely optimistic in terms of solutions coming out of this space, especially because there’s been more traction that’s been in this space in the last, let’s say, three years as compared to the last three decades put together. So, there’s a lot of movement in the right direction that’s happening. While, in India, we are seeing small movements that are coming along but I think at the larger levels also, there are somethings that are coming along. Let’s, take the example of Indore, which is a very talked-about town in terms of the cleanest town in India itself year after year. And I think there’s a lot of learning that we can take from there where having visited Indore myself and seeing the case study over there, I think they have reached almost 90% plus segregation of waste at source. And, like how Gurashish has been mentioning, I think the biggest problem is that we are not sorting our waste. And if you’re not segregating, then it becomes waste and it doesn’t become a resource. So, there is a silver lining. Having seen a city like Indore do it, I think there’s a lot that we can learn from them and move towards a more sustainable future. The second thing probably is that there’s a lot of policy shift that’s coming along. With global pressure on plastic pollution, sustainable development goals have come across at the global level. Even in India, the plastic waste management rules were for the first time introduced in 2016—they never existed before–which is part of the solid waste management rules earlier. So that’s bringing around a lot more traction in this space. And then of course, our Prime Minister’s global Swachh Bharat movement, which if nothing, has at least brought in awareness to a very large level of population which is that we need to work towards a cleaner India. So, I think there’s a lot of policy pressure, also external pressure that’s coming along, which is moving towards the right direction in that sense. And then finally, I feel that when we started ReCircle in 2016 and as we sit today in 2024, we have seen this industry evolve so much that earlier clean tech as a sector did not even exist. You know, the sustainability term in large organisations did not even exist. And now we’re seeing that it’s becoming a part of board-level conversations. Also, so many innovators and startups that have come up in this space that are working towards solutions, not just for garbage, but for carbon, water, and energy working towards a more sustainable ecosystem altogether. So there’s a lot of movement and innovation that’s happening in this space and that keeps me extremely optimistic about the future while this has been a large problem in the past, there are people and there are solutions out there. It’s a matter of all of us taking those small steps and picking the right solutions.

I feel that when we started ReCircle in 2016 and as we sit today in 2024, we have seen this industry evolve so much that earlier clean tech as a sector did not even exist. The ‘sustainability’ term in large organisations did not even exist. And now we’re seeing that it’s becoming a part of board-level conversations. Also, so many innovators and startups that have come up in this space are working towards solutions, not just for garbage, but for carbon, water, and energy working towards a more sustainable ecosystem altogether. So there’s a lot of movement and innovation that’s happening in this space and that keeps me extremely optimistic about the future while this has been a large problem in the past.-Rahul Nainani

22:47:

Lalitha Krishnan: Right. Thanks for that. All right, so who are your prime customers? Are they brands that we recognise? Are there labels on recycled, repurposed products that we can look for?

23:01:

Gurashish Singh: Right, Some of the brands that we are associated with and work with are prominent organisations such as Hindustan Unilever, United Nations Development Programme, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, Mondelez. We are one of the sole partners for Tata Starbucks, helping them assist in their sustainability objectives and needs. We also work with brands across all sizes. A lot of brands in the D2C (Direct to Consumer) space as well, such as Phases, a skincare Indian brand, Honey Twigs, which is into honey and one-time use packaging. So yeah, quite a few prominent big and small brands and, and it’s, it’s been a good journey working with them.

Some of the brands that we are associated with and work with are prominent organisations such as Hindustan Unilever, United Nations Development Programme, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, Mondelez. We are one of the sole partners for Tata Starbucks, helping them assist in their sustainability objectives and needs. We also work with brands across all sizes. A lot of brands in the D2C (Direct to Consumer) space as well, such as Phases, a skincare Indian brand, Honey Twigs, which is into honey and one-time use packaging. -Gurashish Singh

23:54:

Lalitha Krishnan: Nice. So, everything you do is really impressive. And it’s on an incredible scale as far as I can see, but it’s almost–I mean since I’m speaking to you, I now know–but mostly invisible to the public eye or backstage almost to speak. So, what does ReCircle do to nip the garbage problem at the consumer level? I’m not sure if that’s a clear question.

24:21:

Rahul Nainani: I think I get an idea, in terms of what are we doing in terms of consumer awareness and the consumer-side work? So, to build a business in this space, we realise that we have to make a large impact, we need to get big brands to start taking action. Of course, consumers need to do their bit. But there’s a while we, our main focus has been on B2B and working with big brands to make that change happen, there’s a lot of work that we do on the consumer level as well. Maybe through a collection drive in the city of Mumbai. And if you want to discard your recyclable ways, we’ve also recently started getting into a textile-based collection as well– your old clothes as well as your dry waste. We have a monthly pickup that we provide to consumers where you can sign up free of cost. And we do a door-to-door pickup once a month. And, the schedule of this is something that is already finalised for the entire year. So, if you simply follow us on Instagram, our handle is recircle.in you’ll be able to see & sign up for our next collection drives.

25:28:

Rahul Nainani: We do a lot of work in the form of ‘Waste to Art’ workshops to spread awareness of how waste is not waste. We conduct workshops either in corporate offices or, even otherwise in spaces where you can sign up to see what you can make best out of waste. So, there’s a lot of awareness that happens there. We’ve worked in the past with the Start Art Festival in terms of setting up installations for waste. So, the Evelyn House installation, maybe Lalitha, you remember seeing it last year. The entire building had plastic bags sprouting out of it. We were happy to associate with the artist who helped design that in terms of spreading awareness. So that’s another thing where we use art as a way in terms of spreading awareness.

Evelyn House Art Project.
*https://www.instagram.com/p/CnUUxqZILit/?img_index=1*

26:21:

We do have regular clean-up drives in terms of beach cleanups and other stuff that we end up doing as well.

And, finally, we also conduct Zero-waste events. So, events are a massive area where there’s a lot of footfall of people and consumer awareness can be spread. So we work with event organisers to help organise a #zerowaste to landfill event. So may it be a music festival with the likes of let’s say #SoundRise or a #TappedFest or maybe a marathon. So, we’re doing work with the #PowaiMarathon in Mumbai as well. And, the biggest one that we’ve done until now is the #ICCWorldCup matches that happened at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Gujarat, there were more than 1,00,000 people attending each match. We managed to make sure that the entire event was zero-waste over there. More than 1000 tonnes of waste that were generated at all the matches were eventually sent for processing as compared to reaching landfills and oceans.

Managing textile waste
https://www.instagram.com/p/C4x0jXaNtZk/?img_index=1

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s very impressive.

27:27:

Rahul Nainani: So, we believe that consumers need to play a very crucial role and consumers like us and citizens like us, where we try and do a small bit of awareness through the different activities. If you also follow us on Instagram, there’s a lot of awareness material that we put out over there as well. But through these events, through these collection drives, we can touch base with different consumers at different levels as well and thereby, spread the awareness. At the end of it, the idea is that consumers generate the waste, and they also purchase the waste in a way. So, how do we get consumers to become conscious consumers at the end of it? By actually picking brands that are taking action as compared to the ones that are not. So, it is a small, small part of the puzzle that we play. But the idea is that consumers can spread this awareness across different other consumers as well.

Lalitha Krishnan: Right, complete awareness and change in lifestyle. I think you’re doing a great job.

Rahul Nainani: One step at a time. You know, I think the only thing is that it might get overwhelming that you have to do a lot, but take those small steps.

28:40:

Lalitha Krishnan:

Tell me about ReCircle’s initiatives: ClimaOne, Plastic EPR service, and Plastic Neutral Programmes. I don’t have a clear understanding of these things and whether they’ve been included in your earlier replies.

28:58:

Rahul Nainani: So maybe a few of them are something that we did speak about like we do zero waste events. Wherein, if you’re an event organiser, we help you manage the event and ensure that the waste that is generated is firstly reduced, pre-planned, and make sure that the processes are set up. And then, of course, look at managing the waste after the event is closed. We do collection drives for consumers, which is where consumers can participate by disposing of their recyclable waste as well as textile waste now.

But on the B2B side, we have a few services. We have a service where we essentially help brands to offset their plastic footprint. So, in simplicity, let’s say you’re a brand that is selling 10,000 beverage bottles in the market, we collect, sort, segregate and recycle these 10,000 bottles on your behalf and ensure that it’s getting recycled and give you credits for this. So similar to how carbon credits work, we work on plastic credits and within the plastic credit space, we have two of our services. One is our EPR service, which is more compliance based. So as a part of the plastic waste management rules, if you are a big brand, you need to collect back as much plastic as you put in the market. So we help brands offset as well as meet their regulatory compliance requirement. And then we have a similar service for medium and small-sized brands, which currently do not require to do this as a compliance, but are doing this as a voluntary activity where we not only help you offset your footprint under our Plastic Neutral Programme but also help you communicate the impact of this with your consumers. So, your consumers know what are the actions that the brand is taking. At the backbone of this is our clean tech platform called Clima One, where Clima One brings transparency and traceability to this unorganised sector. Where consumers and brands can track what’s happening is that there’s no greenwashing happening, when the material is being collected. So we are digitising and formalising the supply chain with the help of our tech platform which enables us to provide these services to the brand owners that we work with.

31:00:

Lalitha Krishnan: OK. I’m down to the last question. What thoughts would you like to leave with our listeners? Or could you share a word or a concept that adds to you know, our understanding of what you do?

31:17:

Gurashish Singh: For me, it would be segregation of waste. I think that’s where it all starts. That’s where the journey begins. So, to the listeners, it would be like wherever you are, whatever you do, start by segregating your waste. It’s not that difficult. You put segregated dry, wet and you do it the minute you’re throwing your waste. It should be a conscious decision to throw it in the right bin. And that’s what enables a beautiful future for the waste going forward.

Lalitha Krishnan:Thanks for that. I like the fact that you’re emphasising this throughout our conversation and it’s just simply segregate. All right. I hope our listeners remember that. How about you, Rahul?

32:05:

Rahul Nainani: I think, we like to rethink things at ReCircle and one of the primary things of rethinking is that when you look at something as waste, you tend to throw this in a dustbin and you realise that it has no value. But I think what people need to start rethinking is that if you rethink waste as a resource, then you start looking at it from a very different perspective. And, that’s what I want the listeners to take back after this conversation. That, rethink waste as a resource, a resource that can impact the lives of the millions of people who are working in this sector. It can also be a resource to reduce our reliability on fossil fuels and on our ever-depleting resources that we have. So if we use our waste as a resource, we can minimise the requirement of new resources and thereby move towards a more circular and sustainable future.

ReCircle staff at facility. via https://recircle.in/

33:05:

Lalitha Krishnan: True. Thank you so much. That’s being creative with your waste. Think of how you can reuse it like we all did in the 70s but I guess we didn’t have that much plastic to deal with back then.

33:18:

Rahul Nainani: I think being Indians, we’re ingrained with this mindset of reuse and reduce. And if you just look back in terms of what your grandmothers and grandfathers used to do, I think that there’s a lot that we can learn even by just going back to the basics in terms of waste management or circular economy.

Lalitha Krishnan: Thank you so much, this has been great.

Rahul Nainani: Thank you so much.

Gurashish Singh: OK, bye.

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

Photos Credit/Courtesy: ReCircle Podcast cover/label design by Lalitha Krishnan

Disclaimer: Views, thoughts, and opinions
expressed in the podcast and show notes belong solely to the
guest/guests featured in the episode, and not necessarily to the host of
this podcast/blog or the guest’s employer, organization, committee or
other group or individual.

Meet Almitra Patel. The Garbologist who gave India Solid Waste Management Rules.

December 6, 2019November 3, 2024 ~ Lalitha Krishnan ~ 1 Comment

EP#13 Heart of Conservation Podcast. Shownotes.

Lalitha Krishnan: Welcome to Heart Of Conservation Podcast Season 2, This is episode 13. I’m Lalitha Krishnan, your host, bringing you inspiring stories that keep you informed and connected with our natural world. I’m talking to Almitra Patel today. She’s an environmental policy advocate and anti-pollution activist, and also one of the most unusual and amazing persons I know. Her Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court against the open dumping of municipal solid waste was instrumental in the drafting of the Municipal Solid Waste Management Rule in India. Her clean up India campaign started 20+ long years… long before it hit our billboards and screens perhaps even our conscience. While you and I were travelling to pretty places she was visiting garbage dumps all over the country. Somewhere in between these visits, she lost her sense of smell.

Her endless energy and determination have resulted in waste management policies being implemented at the home level, village level, small and big towns and cities all over India. It’s no wonder then that she was the best-qualified person to draft the Swach Bharat manual. Not one to sit still, Almitra is now looking into phosphorous carrying detergents that are polluting our water bodies. She wants manufacturers to label their products so we make the right choice. Her’s is an ongoing journey of activism but let’s hear it from her.

Welcome and thank you Almitra for being a guest on Heart of Conservation Podcast. Almitra, I’ve known you for 25+ years and I’ve never been able to keep up with all the incredible things you do. In 1959 you became the first Indian woman engineer to graduate from MIT. You’re also associated with saving the Gir Lions, being a tree warden, saving Ulsoor Lake, and building low-cost homes. Our country has its first ‘Municipal Solid Waste Management Rule or MSW thanks to you. It all started when the frogs stopped singing in your backyard. Is that right?

Almitra Patel: On the beautiful country road to our farm. Because Bangalore was dumping its garbage on the roadside there. It was a horrifying thing with stray dogs turning feral with no leader of the pack. They would gather together in the evening; and attack children going to school in the mornings, farmers going home after dusk and, killing livestock by day or by night…coming into farms and killing fowls…chickens, ducks. So there was no human restraint to their behaviour. They all became wild and followed a pack leader and at dawn and dusk, the dogs would gather in packs and chase two-wheelers, chase farmers and go out marauding and killing animals, even in the day time, even at midday. So, when I tried to help Bangalore clean up its act…in the meanwhile, there was a Capt. S. Vellu, from EXNORA, Chennai. I had been in touch with him for almost a year. Then there was the Surat plague on 24^th September 1994. He said, “India is sitting on a time bomb.” Surat became like that because the garbage blocked the drains. The choked drains flooded the rat holes which made them come out and (caused) the plague and so on. So he said, we got to do a Clean India campaign- 30 cities in 30 days, starting on 2^nd October. Which was what, 8,9 days away? And, we did it. We did the 30 cities and it was such an eye-opener because all the municipal people we met-all the commissioners-when we asked, “So what are you doing with your garbage?” They’d say, “I don’t know.” Ting. Ting. Ting. Call the sanitary inspector. He’d yell out, call the driver. And only the lowest man knew where he chucked anything. So all the municipal officers… when we explained, “Keep your wet and dry waste unmixed so both can be recycled, and have doorstep collections so there’s no waste on the road, and so on, they said, “Oh Won’t you start a scheme for us? Won’t you come back at the end of your tour?’’ And so, it became apparent that there was a need to do something on a national level. We went around in my high roof red Maruti van and the banner which Velu put up at the back (read) ‘Clean up and flourish or pile up and perish’.

Lalitha Krishnan: I like that. So, the municipal commissioners did take you seriously?

Almitra Patel: They did. They welcomed us. They said, “Nobody has ever told us what to do. We only see pictures in the newspaper of overflowing dustbins, choked drains, burning garbage and no one says what to do. That was the need for the rules so that everyone could have a road map.

Lalitha Krishnan: Sounds like Capt. Vellu knew what he was doing

Almitra Patel:He had worked with EXNORA in Chennai- Excellent, Novel, Radical. This was MB Nirmal banker who went to Hong Kong with 11 other bankers on a study tour. The others went shopping and sightseeing and he kept going around, wondering, “How can this place be so clean?” And he came back to Chennai and he conceptualized this. He found the waste pickers grubbing in dustbins and he asked them, “What are you looking for?” (They replied) “Trying to take out recyclables to feed our families and educate our children. So then he said, “I’ll give you uniforms, I’ll call you ‘street beautifiers’ and I’ll ask you to collect dry waste, clean separate dry waste from every home.” Then he called some actor, cricketer for a neighbourhood meeting so everybody came. Then, those people said, “Keep your waste separate, don’t chuck it 24 hours a day at your neighbour’s gate, you know? Wait till it will be collected.” So, the whole policy which we have, I mean the rules, actually came from NB Nirmal’s EXNORA. And, Vellu had been sent to Bangalore after a year in Vijayawada, to spend a year in Bangalore implementing that model somewhere. Then he said, “I can’t be sitting around. If I take a year per city it will take 300 years to cover India’s 300 Class I cities, means, one-lakh plus populations. That was the drivers first for the Clean India Campaign and after that, I was told, “If you want to get anything done, then go to the Supreme Court and ask for it.

Lalitha Krishnan: That must have taken a great deal of patience and determination. Tell us how that went?

Almitra Patel: Well, I thought I’d walk in, ask the court that municipalities need land for composting. Municipalities can’t do composting within their limits in a big centralised way. Because they can’t purchase land outside their municipal limits, the state has to give it to them. So, I thought I’d just ask for waste management sites, say thank you and go home. And the case took 20 years. 54 hearings in the Supreme Court…for three-four years… nothing happened. Then it went to the NGT and I think there were 15 hearings there till December 16. So, from December ‘96 to almost to the date, December ’16, it finished.

Lalitha Krishnan: Goodness. Hats off and thank you from all of India. I heard you have visited multiple dumping grounds, over 170?

Almitra Patel: Now it is 206 dumping grounds and their municipalities in that ’94 trip all over India. And, if I visit one, more than once, I don’t count them twice. 206 different ones. Some, I’ve been 3, 4 5 times.

Lalitha Krishnan: Really?

Almitra Patel: Yes. Over these 25 years.

Lalitha Krishnan: it’s pretty potent stuff. Frankly, I am not sure if I would be able to stomach that. I am not sure how many listeners could either.

Almitra Patel: A fortunate thing that happened is my nose stopped functioning about 17 years ago. Everyone goes around with a hanky on their nose and feeling sick. I don’t notice a thing and I have to ask my driver, “Has the smell begun? Is it worse?”

Lalitha Krishnan: I love the way you’re laughing about it. Without meaning to sound rude, not smelling anything sounds like a good criterion for checking out garbage dumps.

Almitra Patel: The most amazing thing is that the court-appointed this expert committee in Jan ’98 and we gave an interim report in November ’98 that’s eight of us, meeting every month and so on. And then, one of the members said, “Eight people cannot decide for the whole country. And so (we) asked the court for permission to present this interim report to all the commissioners of 300 Class I cities. So, 75 each, at Calcutta, Chennai, Bombay and Delhi. Delhi had the least attendance. Calcutta had the best from the eastern region. One of them presented all our things and said, “Do you have comments and so on?” There was very good buy-in and I am very proud that these rules are perhaps, the first to my knowledge, that is framed by a committee with consensus. Otherwise, you have a group of 6-7-8 out of which 2-3 are active, and it’s a rule for everybody. Luckily, the 2000 rules-it was early days. People didn’t even know the difference between compostable food waste, which we call, ‘wet waste’ for short and recyclables, which we call ‘dry waste’ for short. In those days, there was only compostable, recyclables and debris-innards, the third kind. It was only between then and now; now the 2016 Rules which have come are much more detailed and elaborate. At that time, you couldn’t afford to tell someone, “You shall…”. You could only say, “You should advise citizens to do this…”. Now it is a rule. Everyone has to do this because the situation has gone so much more out of hand. Kids in schools are also learning about it now. ‘Wet’, ‘dry’, ‘doorstep’, ‘recycling’, ‘composting’. These are all now household words.

Lalitha Krishnan: But not terms like leachate, windrow, biomining etc. I know you are going to explain all of this.

Almitra Patel:I also, as a city person in Bombay, would give my waste to the servant to take downstairs. I never followed him downstairs to see what he put it in. Or ask the people in the vehicle, “where is the waste going?” “To Deonar?” Or anything like that. So, only after I got onto this journey, did I begin to worry about where is it ending?

Lalitha Krishnan: Garbage has become such a huge issue but most of us don’t know much about handling it or know where it’s going or rather choose not to know.

Almitra Patel:I think it’s important for people to know from Vedic times, until the late 70s, there were no dumpsites. No Indian city needed a dumpsite because there was no plastic. The only thing that came out of a house was kitchen waste. And farmers, after bringing their produce into town would actually fight over the dustbins and have a teka, “this is my lane”, “my lane”, and take it back for composting on their farms. Two things killed this. One was the Green Revolution which told the farmers, “You just add urea and your crops will jump out of the ground and you don’t need to worry about composting” Second thing, the plastic yug began. When people said, “I don’t need this food waste, this plastic waste…in those days if we had the wits and foresight and told people, “Don’t chuck plastic in the food”, we wouldn’t be where we are today. So, there were no real mountains of waste at that time. It began, as I said, in ’91 and in ’94, we decided to do something about it when they started dumping this unwanted mixed waste on the roadside.

Lalitha Krishnan: What can we do at home to minimise the pile up on the dumping sites?

Almitra Patel: The whole idea is people will keep their dry and wet waste separate. It will not lead to mountains of mixed waste in some poor villager’s backyard with the leachate going into their groundwater and methane coming out and causing global warming. My latest interest has been to bring down these old heaps and that is done by bioremediation or biomining. What cities are doing at present; they’ll drive to some dumping ground, they’ll unload the truck, have an earth mover level it, drive over it, compact it…maybe, cover it with earth occasionally. But, instead, if they would simply only do which has to be done in every compost plant…that is to unload the waste in windrows which means, long, narrow heaps-parallel heaps, about 2-2.5 metres, not more. And these heaps can be very easily formed as a tipper truck moves slowly forward while unloading. So, it can just unload it in a long heap. You need one parking lot manager-type person saying, “This row is over, now start a parallel one and Truck no. 6, 7, 8, 9 can form the next one. Then, if you spray that with bio-cultures and turn it weekly, then the moisture goes out and some of the carbon turns to carbon dioxide with air. That’s why it’s called ‘Windrows’. So, wind can blow between the rows and aerate the heaps. And the volume comes down to 40%. Imagine that?

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s nearly half. And not so difficult to do either.

Almitra Patel: Almost half. So, if they do that then, you won’t have a big new heap. And, after four turnings, that waste is stabilised like leaves on a forest floor. There’s no leachate, no methane, no smell. That stabilized waste can be used anywhere. If we give it wet waste, compostable waste, then all of that can go straight, as is, to farms or restoring degraded land. So, now there are new options available where if you go to YouTube, Almitra Patel and look for Gurugram, Faridabad or look for Nagpur or Kumbakonam. These are three which describe simple ways of bioremediating. What they want to do which gets them a lot of money and a lot of excuses for land to flog to someone and pollute is ‘capping’. This means just covering with a plastic sheet, soil and grass, so it will look pretty but it’s like lipstick on mouth cancer. Everything is still decomposing inside generating leachate into the ground and the methane is slipping out of the sides of the cover. You can’t seal it because it was not lined in the first place. So, this capping is what they do in the West when they have a full bottom and side-lined pit and then if you put a liner on top – what they call a dry tomb. So, it makes no sense when you have an unlined dumpsite in India or anywhere else.

Lalitha Krishnan: I just hope people are listening. It just seems like we don’t know enough about handling solid waste.

Almitra Patel: Another thing which is a new kind of solid waste is fecal sludge. Septic tank sludge. This is something that your listeners should know. We have been coned by advertisers into using phenyl, bleach and strong microbe -killers which all go through your toilets and drains into your septic tanks killing the microbes which are supposed to live there and digest your solid waste. People complain why they have to empty their septic tanks every year, at huge expense – six to seven thousand (rupees) or more. At our school in Devlali, near Nashik, with 4000 kids, all day scholars, they used to empty the septic tank annually. After we started adding a bio-culture, from one supplier, for eleven years we haven’t emptied the septic tank. That’s because we stopped using phenyl, and we started using liquid soap, one tbsp in the bucket to clean the toilets or composting bio-culture itself to wash the toilets so that it would end up in the septic tank. All the sludge would get digested in the septic tank. So, you never need to clean it. And that water doesn’t overload your sewage treatment plants which empty into lakes and destroy the lakes. Because the sewage treatment plants in India only lower the Ph. They monitor the Ph and COD which is Chemical Oxygen Demand, and BOD which is Biological Oxygen Demand. They try to reduce that but they don’t reduce the nitrogen and phosphorus which are nutrients that are flowing with wastewater into the lakes and growing water-hyacinths and all the aquatic vegetation.

Lalitha Krishnan: Where can one access bio cultures? Is it easily available?

Almitra Patel: Not yet but if people begin to ask their supermarkets for them then it would show up on the shelves. Otherwise, just use Fem and that kind of liquid soap, not the microbicidal, bactericidal handwash. Use plain liquid soap. That’s good enough to wash your toilets.

Lalitha Krishnan: Almitra I know you must have many stories to tell but what part of your journey gave you made you feel satisfied or made you say This is what I hoped for?

Almitra Patel: What was for me, a great success, in this case, was, you know, I had asked for hyenic, eco -friendly management for 300 Class I cities, (I Lakh plus population) but the rules came out applying to all urban, local bodies, which means even 20,000 plus populations. So, that covered 4-5000 more cities. Another thing; in the beginning when the court directed all the states to give composting sites to their major cities, it happened. And I was happy about it. But all the cities misused this. Instead of dumping it on the highways, they said. “Yeah, now I got land and they rushed and dumped everything is a huge dump pile on a site which was meant for composting and doing it properly. So, what was non-point population along the highways – no man’s land of road-shoulders suddenly became point pollution for the villagers around these dumps. So, my dream became my nightmare. Now what we’re saying is that cities don’t have a right to ruin the life and heath of villagers outside for no reason with waste that isn’t there’s even. So, the trend, in the 2016 rules also, they are preferring decentralised composting with the city. There’s a lot of push back. Everyone says, not in my road, not in my park, not opposite my house…” But it’s your waste.

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s so typical. We don’t want to see anyone else’s garbage; we barely want to see our own.

Almitra Patel:So that has to change.

Lalitha Krishnan: What’s (a fitting example of a city/town) that comes to mind which has adopted good waste management practices.

Almitra Patel: Bangalore is the first in HSR layout park which has a Compost learning centre where they’ve got a shed with 13 different ‘home-composting models’ from -1,2-5-10 kgs. and a row of 7 open-air ‘community composting’ solutions. Anything from 50-500 kilo or one ton a day. What I like the best are lane composters. They are like large well-lit boxes raised off the ground so that air can go in from below and you put in some dry leaves; the waste can go in from some 40 houses and (you) sprinkle some bio-culture…it can even be sour curd and jaggery water or purchase bio-culture. Or a dilute 5% solution of fresh cow dung and again, some leaves. And you need twin boxes like this. One fills up in 15 days and you work on the second, leaving the first one to mature in 15 days. Then you empty that and begin again. And, that is so inconspicuous. You need people in the lane whoa re prepared to host it in front of their gate and take responsibility for managing it in order.

Lalitha Krishnan: Almitra thanks for sharing these But, if we want to know more about your work or delve into solid waste management a little more deeply where would you direct us.

Almitra Patel: http://www.almitrapatel.com/ So on the home page, top right, is a winking thing saying, ‘Free download. SWM guide Book’.

Lalitha Krishnan: Excellent.

Almitra Patel: That’s a 70-page manual that I wrote for the Swach Bharat Mission. Unlike the other manuals which the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs brings out, which starts with metro cities, this one begins with villages. Then goes to tiny towns, little bigger towns, medium towns and so on.

Lalitha Krishnan: In your long mission to clean up India, you must have come across some interesting people.

Almitra Patel: I’d like to share with people my hero. In 2003, I heard about a commissioner in S. A. Khadar Saheb, in Suryapet, which is about 3 hours east of Hyderabad. On his own, without even having studied the Solid Waste Rules, he just came up with the same idea. So, if people will look up Suryapet on my website, they can read about him. He also broke away from this common practice of Group-cleaning. So, after the morning work, a dozen workers are put together to clean the street. One or two do it while you can see the others sitting around. So, he gave a half kilometre stretch of a drain to one person with a wheelie-bin to take out the silt and not leave it on the drain-side. Then he had a separate leak-proof lorry going around so that the wet silt from the drains could go from the wheelie-bin into the lorry and then it went on to road shoulders for road widening, pothole filling. He needed no dumpsite at all. The amazing thing was this was a town of one lakh, three-thousand population. And, he managed everything on a half-acre site right in the heart of town. Quarter-acre was where he did compost. Stack composting (which on my YouTube channel, you can look at Kolar). After the stack compost was partly decomposed, he put it into vermi-bins for earthworms. And the driveway he constructed a shed on the quarter-acre with partitions for walls and he engaged, on salary, eight waste pickers saying, “Put your thin plastic, thick plastic, paper, cardboard, wood, metals in different gallas. He invited the kabbadi-wallasto come and purchase it from them. And within 6 months, his income every month from a one lakh population was one lakh rupees. Rs 45,000 from compost sale. Rs. 55,000 from the dry waste sale. Minus four workers for the composting and eight waste pickers for the dry. It was an amazing self-sustaining model. He didn’t get a pie of support from the state, the centre…no grant, no NGOs…nothing. Just manging with municipal funds. So, he innovated beautifully. He took eight self-help groups to the bank and said, “The municipality is going to engage them for door-door collections so a tractor would drive every 6-7 houses and stop and collect the waste (wet and dry, separate) from the houses. Near the driver was a high well-meshed cage for dry waste and near the tail the wet waste. And everyone standing there could see clearly that the wet and dry were being managed separately and that their efforts were being valued. He went to the bank and said, “Give them a loan for brand new tractors. And the EMIs for it, the municipality will pay directly and deduct from the fees which we are going to pay them for the collection”. At the end of five years, the tractor belonged to a self-help group. Even while they were doing the collection, after they collected the waste in the morning, in the afternoon, if they wanted to move sand or lumber, they could use them and use the extra income on their own. It was their tractor. That was a beautiful model.

Lalitha Krishnan: Definitely sounds like it. Almitra so when it comes to small towns v/s big cities where so do you think SWM will work more efficiently?

Almitra Patel: My hope these days is for small towns. Because the big towns think they know it all. They are dragged away on foreign tours to sell them inappropriate technology like ‘waste to energy’. How do you burn waste which has 60% food? Waste, which is 85% moisture? How do you get energy out of a rotten tomato? Unless you are doing bio methanation which is OK but incineration is an absolute No No. Big cities go for all these promises. These foreign people dare to come and say, “Don’t bother with your rules. Don’t bother to segregate. Just give your mixed waste, we’ll take care of everything. But you see what’s happening in Delhi. They promise 100% waste will end up as 5% ash. But in Delhi, Jindal in the middle of Okhla is sending over 30% of their intake as semi-burnt stuff to the dump. You can see charred coconut shells. Partly burnt cloth… Obviously, it’s not reaching temperatures of 1200 or whatever temp. it should if you can recognise it as a cloth or coconut. So, it’s a big fraud. Waste to Energy is the current big scam. So, my hope is with all the small towns. I think small-town people all know each other and can get together easier.

Lalitha Krishnan: Knowing you Almitra I can ask confidently ask what else is on your plate?

Another thing I have been working on is the pollution of surface waters. Ulsoor Lake in Bangalore. Village ponds. Nobody can go and swim in the village pond like their fathers or grandfathers used to. It’s all fully choked with water hyacinths. And the reason is—which was discovered by scientists in the US and Canada, when Lake Eerie between the two countries was turning green with aquatic vegetation, which would sink to the bottom, die, consume the oxygen, kill all the fish. That’s called eutrophication. And they wondered what to do to save the lake. They found that in the late 60s, synthetic detergents had been invented and they were using phosphorous. Sodium tripolyphosphate as an ingredient in synthetic detergents. Not soaps but in synthetic detergents. So, over a three-year battle, we fought in the courts with all the multi-nationals also. They succeeded in limiting the phosphorus content, in 1973, to 2.2% phosphorous, by weight, in the detergent. And that rule is still followed and practiced today though the Washington State says, “We will have no phosphorous in dish-washing and clothes-washing machine detergents and so on.” Europe also followed suite with 2.2%. India has not. And the same MNCs who are following the rules abroad-in US, Canada, and EU…they control 80% of the detergent market in India. There may small, small brands who are all making detergents for the big guys and they refuse to lower the phosphorus content.

Phosphorus is what is called a limiting nutrient. If you cut off the phosphorous, you cut off the aquatic plant growth. If you give phosphorous, it’s like a special booster nutrient for aquatic vegetation. Just like what urea or nitrogen is for land crops, phosphorous is for aquatic vegetation. So it’s so simple. I’ve been saying if the government doesn’t want to bite the bullet and restrict it at least make it mandatory to label the phosphorous content in detergents so that environment-conscious citizens can buy a low-phosphorous detergent. It’s an ongoing battle which hasn’t been won yet. But we need more voice to demand it.

I was speaking with environmental activist Almitra Patel. Check out her website almitrapatel .com. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Heart of Conservation Podcast. I’d love your feedback. Do write to me at earthymatters013@gmail.com. If you know somebody whose story should be told or is doing interesting work, do contact me.

You can download Heart of Conservation podcast episodes for free on Soundcloud, Apple podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can also read the full transcript on earthymatters.blog. Bye for now.