Plastics constitute a growing threat to our environment – and in turn, human well-being – affecting the world’s freshwater systems and marine resources in particular, as well as terrestrial biodiversity and public health.
In India, where plastic use is rising, most cities and towns do not have an integrated solid waste management system.
This means that very little plastic waste is properly collected or disposed of, resulting in a massive waste-management challenge as cities continue to grow.
But in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, waste collectors in two cities, Bhopal and Indore, are turning plastic waste into roads, as well as income for women.
Waste collectors, or ragpickers as they are known more colloquially in the cities of Bhopal and Indore, are being encouraged to hand over plastic waste to local collection centres.
Single-use plastics, which would have ended up in landfill sites, are now being used to fuel cement furnaces and build roads, providing an additional income source for the ragpickers.
The project, under the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP), implemented by UNDP, has been so successful that it has been extended across India and has been replicated in neighbouring Bangladesh.
Figures says all
According to the data provided by United Nations Development Project’s (UNDP) Small Grant Programme (SGP), India generates about 62 million tonnes per annum and nearly 1,70,000 tonnes per day of waste, only about 24 per cent of which is recycled, while the rest is dumped in landfills.
Bhopal generates 800 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste per day. Around 120 metric tonnes (or 15 per cent) is plastic waste, and approximately 60-70 per cent of the total waste is dumped into landfills.
In the city of Indore, home to almost 2 million people, 800-900 metric tonnes of waste are generated every day, 14% of which is plastic – enough to fill 5-7 shipping containers.
Urban waste management is one of the top priorities of the Government of India and local and affordable innovations in this sector are highly valued.
In this context the ‘circular economy’ concept – an economic system intended to eliminate waste and the ever-increasing use of resources – offers a pathway to more sustainable resource management. It means reduced production, use, and disposal of plastics.
Through the single powerful objective of reduce > reuse > recycle, waste collectors in Bhopal and Indore are working to prevent cast-off plastic from entering the environment in the first place.
With the support of the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP), implemented by the United Nations Development Programme, a local NGO in India is working with municipal governments to develop a new system for plastic waste recycling.
The NGO, Sarthak Samudayik Vikas Avan Jan Kalyan Sanstha (SSVAJKS), has been working with waste collectors in Bhopal since 2008 to streamline plastic waste collection and sales to recyclers.
SSVAJKS initially developed a sustainable integrated waste management system for five wards in the city of Bhopal, which served as a model for the creation of a plastic waste management policy at the state level in 2011. This model has now been replicated in all states across India (and even onwards to Bangladesh).
This innovative model, now known as the ‘Bhopal model’, recycles and processes plastic and reuses it in the construction of roads, benefiting over two million people.
Waste-pickers collect and then hand over the plastic waste to collection centres run by the municipal corporation.
The plastic waste is scanned and segregated, and most single-use plastics — which comprise half of all the plastic in this waste stream — are shredded and baled.
These bales are then taken for co-processing at cement kilns, or used to build roads.