Looking at waste as an opportunity, not garbage

Creative recycling or upcycling, as it is fashionably known, has greatly picked up pace in India. The pandemic has further emphasised the need to reduce, reuse and recycle.

If our collective attitudes about rubbish has to change, then the overhaul has to start small. Preferably at home. And for this to happen, it is crucial that more people begin to look at waste as an opportunity rather than, well, garbage. Indeed, if there is one thing all experts on waste management agree upon, it is the fact that the linear make-use-dispose model on which our societies have been built over centuries, needs to go. As Marcus Gover, director of the UK advocacy group WRAP, said once in an interview, it is all about going "circular" and what we need is a weaving together of our economic systems into a "harmonious, never-ending bundle of recycling and reuse". Evidently, no mean task this. However, there are some bright souls who are, in their own small way, aiming to achieve precisely this 'circular' state of society. We profile a few:

Fruit in fruit-shells

Eat Raja is a small juice shop huddled between two temples in Bengaluru's Malleswaram area. The most famous delicacy here is Chilli Guava, where the spice-sprinkled juice is served in the fruit's own shell. "Of course, I'm gonna eat the shell," a customer says after she is down three shots of the juice's servings. In the end, she has nothing left in her hand. "This is how waste management works," Raja, the shopowner, exclaims.

Raja lost his father in 2018 and inherited the juice stall. In over a year's time, he had transformed it into a zero-waste business. Initially, he faced a backlash. "We were serving juice in washable glasses and had no customers for days together. Customers asked for paper cups and lectured me on hygiene and I gave them a piece of my mind. Given the prime location of our shop, we could have easily generated profits by selling water bottles, but I was adamant," he recalls.

The groundbreaking innovation of serving juices in the fruit's own shell was a gamechanger. "Since I had the time, I could experiment and develop these indigenous methods of serving juices in their own fruit-shells. Watermelon, mosambi, orange, mango, cucumber, bitter gourd; you name it! The pulps and leftover shells act as fodder for cows," he adds.

With some redesign and creative messaging, the shop soon started attracting social-media savvy youngsters. "I had seen queues outside the two temples beside my shop, but now there was a third queue." Raja already has plans of setting up a new branch in Church Street, where he wants to train more staff, but the ongoing Corona crisis has been a setback. "My idea is to spread faster and become bigger than Coronavirus," he jokingly says.

Not into the ashtray anymore!

"Unlike in the West where much of the garbage goes into incinerators, countries like India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Vietnam and Myanmar have had robust cyclic economies for a long time. Historically, the importing capacities of these closed economies were low, which led to a rise in domestic manufacturing. The recycling sector was always integrated into this as it brought down the cost of raw materials," says Kabir Arora, Coordinator for Alliance of Indian Wastepickers at Hasiru Dala, a Bengaluru-based social impact organisation.

With modern-day research and awareness, innovation in waste management has taken off. Today, we have organisations like the Kanpur-based PHOOL, which collects flowers from temples and upcycles them into creative products like perfumes and incense sticks. We also have vanity brands like Mumbai-based Real State, which uses discarded marble waste to create elegant jewellery products. The list of organisations that are creatively managing waste is actually endless.

I spoke to Naman Gupta, the founder of Code Effort, a Noida-based company that has recycled over 50 tonnes of cigarette butts over the past four years. The company sources cigarette waste from all across India through its contractors. The paper from the butts is used to manufacture mosquito repellents, while the soft polymer, which acts as the filter, is used to make soft toys, plush toys, cushions and mattresses.

"We have eradicated 25 crore cigarette butts from going into landfills and dump yards, which translates into 12 crore litres of water getting saved from being contaminated. We are now researching how to use the Cellulose Acetate polymer to create better products like spectacle frames. We are done with our R&D and planning to launch our operations as soon as the Covid dust settles," Naman says.

Pens with seeds

I spoke to Lakshmi Menon, a Cochin-based entrepreneur who rose to fame for making pens that grow into trees when discarded. Her social enterprise, called PURE Living, employs cancer survivors and individuals with paraplegia and they have made over 2.5 lakh units of these miraculous pens with seeds embedded in them. "My idea has been replicated by many others now. I have not taken a patent for this, just to ensure that no one who wants to copy my idea is ever stopped from doing so," Lakshmi says.

One of Lakshmi's recent innovations is the Chekutty doll, an idea she came up with in the aftermath of the devastating Kerala floods of 2018. "Chendamangalam, a weavers' village in Kerala, was completely submerged underwater for over a week. Since it was Onam season, this led to the soiling of tonnes of brand new cloth materials. The initial idea was to burn them, but I started using the clothes to make simple dolls and called them Chekutty. Che represented the name of the village, while kutty means a toddler in Malayalam." The first unit Lakshmi's team worked with had faced losses of 21 lakh due to the floods. They eventually made a profit of 36 lakh over the next three months by selling these dolls. "Today, literally every house in Kerala has a Chekutty doll, which has become a mascot of the Malayali spirit and our resilience against the devastating floods," she adds.

Chekutty doll is just one example. There are many ways of upcycling products. Take a broken shelf and engineer it into a clock. Take an old newspaper and paint it with vivid colours, turning it into a gift-wrapping paper. Use discarded bottle caps to make earrings, fridge magnets and badges. Use old rubber tyres to make brand new footwear. Take used beer bottles and remould them into vases, food platters, bowls or ashtrays. Take discarded clothes and make diary covers or wall hangings with them. And there are brands like Remagined, The Second Life, Swavlambi and Pomogrenade, who are actively mastering the art of upcycling waste into meaningful products.

"There is a difference between upcycling and recycling (see box). Recycling is when you take a material, destroy it and recreate the same material. Upcycling happens when you take an object and reuse it, and in the process, it is moved up in the value chain. Upcycling is looking at material as an opportunity and not waste; allowing every object to live its due course of life before being sent for recycling," says Avinash Rebello, who runs (Re)Made In India, a Bengaluru-based store (which is currently undergoing relocation) that curates upcycled goods from various brands across India.

The Corona effect

"Corona is going to destroy the upcycling sector. Upcycling, although necessary, is still a luxury within the waste management space. Everyone I know in the business of upcycling was just managing to keep one's enterprise afloat even before Corona struck. It is now going to cause a huge setback and possibly push us several years back," Avinash rues.

"Many people dump medical trash in dry waste, including masks, syringes and gloves. Times are only going to get difficult for waste collectors," says Naveen Mariyan, founder of Khalibottle, a Bengaluru-based recycling organisation, which uses technology intensively to work with apartment communities for door-to-door pickup of waste. Kabir adds: "When the lockdown started, suddenly, there was a rise in the mixing of waste. This was because segregation of waste is done by domestic workers in most households who are now on leave. The first week of lockdown was chaotic and wastepicker organisations were figuring out how to manage operations. Meanwhile, people started dumping their mixed waste on the streets. With such behaviour, even if we survive the Covid outbreak, we'll definitely die of plague."

Both Naveen and Kabir admit that the Corona outbreak has led to a rise in usage of protective gears among wastepickers. "We pushed a lot, but nobody was taking us seriously. Suddenly wastepickers have become conscious of this one virus, although there are many deadlier infections they have always been prone to," Kabir says.

The need to protect wastepickers and sanitation workers is felt the deepest during times of such crisis. "Even during the lockdown, people are buying groceries, which means they are generating waste. And waste collection has to continue. If we shut shop, waste will pile up everywhere," Naveen adds. "Even if a vaccine is developed, what good will it be for the wastepickers if it is not affordable? After health workers, it is the sanitation workers and wastepickers who are the most vulnerable to Covid-19. But unlike health workers, these people don't receive fair remuneration, health checkups or insurances. The crisis for them has only begun," Kabir laments.