Informal Recycling - Benefits to Community and the Environment

Contents
1. Community Gain and Cheap Service
2. Environmental Gain and Carbon Offsets

1. Community Gain and Cheap Service

Waste-pickers and scrap-dealers provide a low-cost service to the community. In Delhi, the informal sector collects and transports about 1,088 TPD of recyclables (33) which would otherwise be the responsibility of the municipality. In doing so, they save $ 17.8 million (INR 795 million) per year in collection and transportation costs to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) (33) (34) (35). Similarly, a study named “Recycling Livelihoods”, made by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ, earlier GTZ), SNDT Women’s University and Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group (Chintan) has found that, the informal sector effectively subsidizes the formal waste sector to the extent of USD 4.08 million (INR 200.6 million) per year in waste handling costs in Pune city (36).

Figure 25, Secondary Separation of Waste Paper at a Bulk Waste Paper Dealer Shop

In addition to subsidizing the formal sector and in turn the tax payer’s money, the informal sector also provides an essential service to the community by clearing the streets off waste and augments the collection efficiency of formal systems. The informal recycling sector in Pune is known to handle up to one-thirds of the MSW handled by the formal system (36).
Informal recycling also helps reduce the overall life-cycle impacts of materials by helping to recycle them, reducing the need for additional extraction of virgin raw materials and manufacturing.

Recovery of recyclable materials by the informal system is up to 56% (GIZ estimates 89% in Pune (36); other sources and general consensus suggest 70% (37) as compared to the formal sector where no recovery takes place. The sector also provides livelihood to the marginalized populations among urban poor by providing twice as many jobs as the formal system. In Pune city alone, the informal system operates at a net profit of USD 12.7 million (INR 621 million) per year (36). Even though these revenues are not distributed evenly amongst the populations involved in this sector, the average earnings of the least well-off exceed the statutory minimum wage. This sector achieves such high profits by enhancing “the value of a unit of plastic (as an example) by 750% before it is even reprocessed” (36).

2. Environmental Gain and Carbon Offsets

In addition to providing a cheap service to the community, the informal recycling sector also contributes towards reducing the global warming effect, since recycling has an obvious greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction. Another study by Chintan in 2009, “Cooling Agents” estimates that the informal sector avoids 1 million tons of CO₂ equivalents of GHG emissions in Delhi alone, by collecting 476 TPD of mixed paper, 510 TPD of mixed plastics, 17 TPD of metals and 85 TPD of glass (Total 1,088 TPD of MSW) (33).

Informal recycling also helps reduce the overall life-cycle impacts of materials by helping to recycle them, reducing the need for extraction of virgin raw materials and manufacturing. Recovery of recyclable materials by the informal system is up to 56%.

The monetized environmental benefit on account of the informal system is higher than the environmental costs of the formal system. Also, the use of non renewable energy resources by the informal system for transportation and processing of waste is minimal.