Recycling Industry Split Wide Open


Study reveals alarming extent of dumping of bottles, cans and carry bags amidst waste pickers’ exploitation

Splitting the complete chain of the product economy and the conditions of its recycling and disposal wide open, the study concludes, “recycling of waste is the only way to manage waste sustainably, with proper responsibility by the producers of packaging and products”. For the first time the study makes far-reaching policy recommendations to hold the industry accountable. It also suggests ways to help improve the conditions under which recycling takes place India.

On the one hand, the government signs international treaties to prevent toxic pollutants, on the other hand, both at the centre and the states are proposing toxic incinerators and gasifiers in Delhi, Chennai. Bhopal, Mumbai, Jaipur, Kanpur and other places at a combined cost of over thousands of crores ignoring recycling sector, Ravi Agarwal, environmentalist, Srishti. Nothing is being been learnt from the experience of Timarpur and Gazipur waste to energy projects. However, no sustainable recycling can be accomplished, in the present ramshackled scenario where irresponsible manufacturing industries dump the market with packaging, carry bags and beverage cans, he added.

The Indian mineral bottle water industry dumped over 1 billion water bottles in 2001, with 90 % of them uncollected blocking our drains and littering our countryside. Over 20% of soft drinks are sold in cans, and recycled in backyard smelters along with imported waste. In the absence of any mandatory rule envisaging their responsibility for collection to minimize packaging waste and technology upgradation by the recycling sector, the disastrous amount non-biodegradables endanger our ecological space. Naini Jaiseelan, speaking at the seminar organised at he occasion, stressed on the need for minimisation of waste and inculcation of responsible technologically upgraded recycling. Earlier Dr. Dilip Biswas, Chairperson CPCB, inaugurated the seminar.

As this 15-month study reveals, waste pickers suffer injuries since they work without any protective gear. They who are harassed and exploited include twenty percent women and 24% children. They save the municipality 20% of their budget. The recycling units are stuck with low-level technologies, poor working conditions and are unable to make good quality products.

Although government has rightly banned items which are difficult to recycle, they have failed to enforce the ban and have refused to take action against producers of those packaging and products which are difficult to recycle, causing grave harm to health and environment.


In a scenario where Delhi and other urban cities are desperately looking for landfill space to dump the burgeoning amount of municipal waste and citizens are resisting dumping of waste and building landfills in their backyards, one sector that continues to be exploited and at the same time ignored, it is recycling.