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).

Recycling in India - The Informal Sector

Contents

1. Box, Informal waste management in India and elsewhere

2. Recycling in India

3. Recycling Percentage

1. Informal Waste Management in India and elsewhere (36)

The informal recycling sector in India and elsewhere

1.      supplements the formal system and subsidizes it in financial terms

2.      provides employment to a significant proportion of the population

3.      operates competitively and with high levels of efficiency

4.      operates profitably generating surplus

5.      links up with formal economy at some point in the recycling chain

6.      Offsets carbon emissions by making recycling possible and thus reducing the extraction and use of virgin raw materials

Figure 21, First Stage of Separation of Recyclables into Plastics, Metals and Glass, after Collection by Waste Pickers

2. Recycling in India

Recycling of resources from MSW in India is mostly undertaken by the informal sector. The formal recycling set-up in India in a minor fraction and is only in its initial stages, experimenting different models. Informal recycling in developing nations like India is a consequence of the increased gap in waste service provision (16) and the resultant ease of access to secondary raw materials which have immediate economic value.

Composition of Indian Urban Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)

Contents
1. Composition of MSW
2. Composition of Recyclables and Informal Recycling


1. Composition of MSW

A major fraction of urban MSW in India is organic matter (51%). Recyclables are 17.5 % of the MSW and the rest 31% is inert waste. The average calorific value of urban MSW is 7.3 MJ/kg (1,751 Kcal/kg) and the average moisture content is 47% (Table 6). It has to be understood that this composition is at the dump and not the composition of the waste generated. The actual percentage of recyclables discarded as waste in India is unknown due to informal picking of waste which is generally not accounted. Accounting wastes collected informally will change the composition of MSW considerably and help estimating the total waste generated by communities.