Chapter 10 delves into the specifics of various composting initiatives, past and present, in Hyderabad.

Pretty much all of the success of small scale composting initiatives within Hyderabad depends/depended upon how “pure” the raw organic waste is. Large producers of organic waste such as restaurants and hotels see more of their organic waste becoming compost because #1 They have the resources to sell their waste to private companies and #2 Their waste tends to be separated at source by employees. Un-separated waste (organic from inorganic) tends to end up in landfills because there isn’t a large enough management system, formal or informal, in place to offer this service. Un-seperated waste is more costly to deal with because it requires that extra step in order to avoid contamination.

Although education of the general public about the importance of separating waste is growing in large part due to the work by NGOs and CBOs, this last issue of motivating local households to separate their waste prevents composting from having a large impact environmentally and economically.

In general terms, organic waste in the city is dealt with in the following ways:

• Park Services use leaf and branch litter in compost, reuse it in flower and shrub beds.
• Rich households will compost their own organic waste, and use it on their own private gardens
• Vegetable and fruit markets will sell raw organic waste to farmers (to be used as animal feed or composted for fertilizer)
• Large industries will sell their waste directly to farmers or third party waste disposal companies, who either sell their wares further down the chain or compost it themselves for re-sale.
• The Hyderabad horse club has manure transported to farms daily to be used in mushroom growing.

One disappointing detail about the use of compost and organic waste by farmers is that although it has been shown that organic compost yields better crops and can be used on a wider variety of crops (unlike chemical fertilizer or manure) the number of farmers using it is going down due to a number of factors. Two of the largest reasons being the cost of transporting compost out of the city to rural farms is getting higher and commercial fertilizer and poultry waste is thought to be cheaper than compost. Also, as mentioned in my previous blog entry, the rise in volume of non-biodegradable/toxic waste being mixed in with the organic waste makes it impossible to use for growing food. This makes separation at source all the more critical, although it doesn’t solve the problem of cost of transportation.

The article goes on to describe the experiences of  two NGOs, Sukuki Exnora and SPEQL, in their attempts to build sustainable composting options within the city. Sukuki Exnora, with the help of a government grant, built a small vermicomposting plot in Indira Park. While the site provided a few relatively well paying jobs, safety equipment and operated within budget, complaints from residence soon made things difficult. The site, by its very nature, produced a terrible odor, that made its way into the surrounding neighborhoods. On top of that, the organic waste attracted rodents to the area. After re-locating, some of the complaints abated, but these initial problems are currently preventing the NGO from opening a second site in another part of the city.

SPEQL also opened a vermicomposting site withing the city. Their’s is located near the Kothapet fruit market and relies daily on organic waste directly from the various vendors.  Unlike Sukuki Exnora, SPEQL started out with more funding, better tools and more efficient machinery. However, they reportedly do not offer as much in the way of employees safety and job security. They have sometimes come into conflict with the local market committee, although the reasons are not specified in the article.

Overall, the composting initiatives in Hyderabad, although successful on a small scale, have yet to prove their viability on a large scale. Producing compost continues to be very costly compared to peoples’ purchasing power, and the lack of awareness within the general population about its benefits is also a barrier. On the other hand, since the publishing of this article, I have seen that the interest in this area continues to grow within India. It would be worth exploring how composting can be made more financially sustainable as well as try to solve the problem of cost of transportation and the environmental annoyance of odor and the more serious problem of rodent infestation.

-Ashley

I’m back this week after a horrendous bout with the seasonal flu; made more unfair by the fact that I was actually got  vaccinated this year. No time to carry on about that though, on to this weeks write up!

I continue on with m y previous resource with Chapter 9. (Ch.8 was specific to Nairobi) Chapter eight switches to a general overview of the methods by which organic waste is handled in developing nations in Africa and in India. Specifically, the article explores the current state of composting and vermicomposting and whether these methods of removing organic waste from the SWM stream are viable and beneficial. Composting on a small and local level has existed in developing countries for a long time but has recently garnered attention for its potential to reduce Urban Organic Waste on  large scale. The potential seems obvious. Organic waste can be taken away from cities, composted, sold in the agricultural sector, reducing the amount of waste in landfills and improving the environment within cities. But apparently the challenges of scaling a composting operation up large enough to deal with the growing amount of waste from urban areas still encounters huge obstacles.

Among them, the rise in contamination from non-biodegradable (plastic, heavy metals, broken glass, other chemicals) that get mixed in with organic waste. As the use of inorganic waste has risen in developing nations so has the difficulty in getting “pure” organic waste for composting and animal feed.

Another problem is motivating households and other generators of organic waste to separate their organic waste from inorganic in order to make it cost effective to handle and process. Because generators more often then not are not the beneficiaries of compost materials, they often don’t see the benefit.

Also, since organic waste naturally implies plant matter, the content (and therefore application) of the waste changes by the season, making it hard to create reliable sources of compost for those that use it the most (namely farmers).

Large composting plants are expensive to build and maintain, making them a much less attractive option to cities. It’s easier and far cheaper to continue open dumping or burning.

That being said, it seems composting has made some inroads within India in certain cities. Some municipalities allow farmers access to dump sites where they auction off portions of the dump. Farmers are permitted to take organic waste away from markets at the end of the day to use as animal feed or fertilizers.

Some private companies have answered the call by setting up services for composting within small areas. One company I read about recently, Mobi Trash operating out of Pune, provides a unique door to door composting service for a fee.

The chapter mentions several private research companies working in the field of composting and vermicomposting.

Vermicomposting, although capable of producing higher quality compost is even more expensive to process then anaerobic compost and so it too, exists most successful on a small scale, although small scale operations have the added benefit of providing employment and visibility to educate the public.

The health hazards of composting are not well documented or understood according to the article and concern mostly those employees in direct contact with the raw materials being composted. One of the primary concerns is that of pathogens that can live within the organic material.  Ideally, waste should be composted at 60 C in order to kill pathogens, but due to lack of monitoring and regulations, it’s difficult to know how many composting operations are working within this requirement. Vermicomposting, because it involves live worms, must function at a much lower temperature and statistics on pathogens within these compost materials is not known (as of the date of the article).

The article briefly mentions the sociological issue of ownership. Who owns the compost? For now, composting functions on such a small scale that it’s not an issue that’s received much concern. For now, those entities that perform the function of composting take ownership of it, and from there sell or donate compost to those who use it.

The article draws the conclusion that due to the high cost of composting, it has not become a significant factor in reducing the burden on urban waste management. However, I find this topic worth investigating further. The articles doesn’t give many figures for what the author means by composting being “expensive”.  I’d like some more data in that regard.

-Ashley

My rundown for Chapter 7 will be quite short as it mostly goes into detail the various roles in the formal and informal recycling chain in Hyderabad, how they work together and whether the current system is sustainable. From the “bottom” up we have, Waste Pickers, (Street and Dump), Retail Traders, Itinerant  Buyers, WholeSale Buyers and finally the entrepreneurs and businesses that take recycled goods, remake, reuse and/resell them back into the market place. As one might be able to predict the lower down on the totem pole of this chain you go, the harsher and more insecure the working conditions. Also, this decline also coincides with a marked difference in the education and social standing (caste) of the workers involved.

These different roles within the waste supply chain have developed an interesting if often times unstable relationship with one another. Half the participants in this process of recycing function semi-legally (Retail Traders, Itinerant Buyers and Waste Pickers), while the other half (Whole Salers and Entrepreneurs), though they pay taxes and require work permits, conveniently ignore labor laws in order to cut down on costs. That being said, within the informal activities of the waste management stream, there are unwritten laws that appear to be followed on a regular basis. There is the concept of “tied” and “untied” work which binds waste pickers and retail traders to those entities higher up the chain, but which can provide a measure of  social security not available to workers from the state.

Tied work, means that a waste picker or retail trader collects for only one buyer, but in return the buyer pays out loans against the workers wages in times of illness or other crisis. Also, depending on the type of worker, working tied to a specific buyer can offer a measure of financial security in that a relationship of trust grows over time. Untied work means that a worker collects recyclables for many different buyers. This also has advantages in certain cases as one has more option for selling wares. The downside being, the worker has no access to the small security of a buyer’s loans.

The system of recycling in Hyderabad seems to be working for now, despite the fact that the lower one gets in the chain the more social stigma and resistance there is to individual workers. Waste pickers and retail traders are often harassed by police and residence who see them more as vermin than as useful laborers in the battle against dirty streets. As I mentioned in the previous post, some of that harassment has eased up in cases where workers are backed and supported by NGOs that take the initiative to educate and spread awareness about the importance of waste pickers, but harassment is still a huge problem – particularly for women in this field, who have to deal with sexual harassment and the theft of their collected recyclables more than the men do.  There is no government support for the recycling industry in Hyderabad ( as of the publication of the article that this is referencing). It’s importance it simply seen as secondary to health and sanitation, so it hasn’t received as much appreciation or attention.

Chapter 6 (Chapter 5 was specific to Nairobi) goes into detail about the recycling chains in Hyderabad and other parts of India as well as how changes in this delicate system can wreak havoc on the most vulnerable of its actors (i.e. waste pickers)

While recycling programs and their importance are widely accepted (if not always executed) in the United States and other developed nations, the same is not so for much of the developing world. The focus in countries like India has been on reducing health hazards to people which necessitates getting waste out of cities as quickly as possible, leaving little opportunity for the separation of inorganic material, and their recycling. Once again, the private sector as risen up to meet this challenge to some extent, however recycling companies don’t have the same support from the government as other waste management sectors. The reason why isn’t clear from the article, but it does go on to say that with limited government support, the private sector contribution to recycling is limited to small, informal enterprises that live or die by shifts in the market for recyclables.

It’s odd that the private sector gets little attention for recycling from the government, since according the article, the private sector does way more to divert the waste flow than either public or NGO’s combined.

The success or failure of the recycling industry in India depends on several factors:

• -Import fees and the relative costs of raw materials vs. recycling costs
• -Availability of alternative employment
• -Whether waste is “mixed” or readily accessible.

Which brings us to the economic distinction between “mixed”and “unmixed” waste. Unmixed waste is more valuable, as it requires less separation and cleaning before being processed into new materials. The challenge in India is to incentivize households to separate their trash to make this process more viable long term. The reason for this problem is, again, not elaborated on in the article, but I would take a guess that it comes down to awareness as well as understanding the financial and social benefit of doing so.

The article goes into further detail on the roles of itinerant traders, dealers and wholesalers in the recycling process. While employees are economically vulnerable at all stages, most of the pain of an economic crisis is felt by the waste pickers. Often, the only social security they have is provided in the form of informal credit during times of illness or death of a family member given to them by dealers and traders, which in turn creates dependency. However, cooperation between NGO’s, the government and local communities has lead to some positive changes in the perception and treatment of waste pickers who are predominantly women and children. Awareness of their role in the waste management system has decreased harassment by police and locals. A small improvement, but an an improvement none the less. The cooperative efforts by local communities, NGOs and governments in recycling, for the time being, seem to only benefit small areas and haven’t been tested in citywide initiatives

One interesting shift is that as private companies have taken over the role of door to door waste collection, there is predictably less trash on the street, however, less income for waste pickers who have relied for so long on the abundance of discarded waste in the streets to make their living.

While steps have been taken to improve the working and living conditions of waste pickers, their low status in society is still a barrier for better recognition. Also, the various actors involved in these waste management chains seem to be struggling to unite under one banner fully due to their differing reasons for wanting to make changes (social justice, cleaner living environment, ecological). As an outsider looking in, it’s easy for me to scratch my head and wonder why those differing reasons matter if the goals are essentially the same.

In short, while waste-to-energy set ups seem to be gaining steam in cities across India, albeit with some resistance, formal, government supported recycling remains elusive.

Chapter 4 (5): ‘Trial and Error in Privatization; The Case of Hyderabad Solid Waste Management’, essentially goes into greater detail on various topics from the previous chapter (See previous post). A thorough breakdown of the organizational structure within MCH, the socio-economic background of its employees (as well as the employees of private contractors) and a long survey of said employees’ perception and level of satisfaction with their respective jobs and employers is discussed. Despite the great disparity in job security, safety and pay between public and private employees I am once again surprised by the level of satisfaction both sides have for their jobs. I think though, this is where the evidence of my own socio-economic privilege shines through. I could never imagine a life where, relatively speaking, working long hours, doing dangerous work that doesn’t even pay enough to survive is still better than whatever work situation I had before. I’ve had low paying, demeaning jobs for sure, but there is just no comparison. It is humbling and worth remembering.

Which isn’t to say that the conditions that the Hyderabad Kamatans and Kamatees (SWM workers) work in should be considered acceptable. The situation for female workers is particularly bad, often working overnight shifts in the dark; always in danger of violence.  Both men and women working in the private sector risk their health everyday. Since much of the work is done manually, without the aid of trucks with hydraulic lifts, employees often suffer from back pain and injuries. For public employees, their benefits allow them sick leave and medical insurance, but for the private sector, they must endure the pain or miss a day’s pay.

While much is being done to improve the actual service area and quality of waste management, nothing is being done to improve the quality of labor conditions and while labor unions exist and have quite a lot of influence in the public sector, once again, private contractors (though on paper they allow their employees to form unions) take great pains to avoid employing union members.

Most of the article deals in data and numbers, something that is very useful for me in understanding the big picture.

__________________________

On another note, being an Illustrator it’s nearly impossible for me to engage in any project without trying to find a way to work with visual representation. I have been thinking about poster designs related to waste management for a while. However, I don’t trust myself to know enough about what appeals to the majority of Indians in order to communicate a message effectively. I’ve seen some amazing social justice campaigns coming out of India that fell flat because the message that was intended was not the one received.

I plan on exploring this issue with my artwork in the coming months. It may never be appropriate as a tool for change but perhaps it will start a dialogue.

In addition to that, as soon as this latest round of snow melts, I am going to start a simple photo project for this blog. Whenever I go out for a walk, if I happen upon a piece of trash I make a point of picking it up and disposing of it. It’s something that started soon after I returned from India last year. It’s a compulsion now. Sometimes I can ignore it, if it’s paper, but plastic of any kind drives me crazy.

So, I want to start a project called “One Piece” wherein each time I go for a walk, I photograph and and throw out at least one piece of trash. It’s my hope to encourage other people to do so. It’s such an easy thing to do. Not a bag of trash, just one piece.

-Ashley

(See previous post for article title/author/editors.)

Chapter three goes into great depth about the MCH’s VGDS program (Voluntary Garbage Disposal Scheme) and also mentions the ‘Clean and Green Andhra Pradesh Campaign’  (1998). Most of the chapter is an outline of the various departments within MCH and their (intended) function but also examines the effectiveness of various SWM strategies (Up until publication, 2004).  I learned about the gaps in the public system and how many of them are filled by private contractors.

The article details the process of waste management from the source(s) (Households, industries, hospitals etc)from beginning to end and describes how the process of collection at each location varies. This was interesting for the purposes of comparison – not just within India but also for when I eventually begin work on researching my own municipality’s procedures.

I also learned about Selco International Limited – a company that turns 200 tonnes of waste a day into pellets that are used as a coal substitute. It doesn’t go into much detail but I’d like to learn more about the environmental effects of burning those pellets, so I have earmarked it for later.

Two parts of the chapter I found most interesting addressed the pros and cons of the contract system vs. the public system including in what ways the private system fails it’s employees in both safety standards, job security and pay. Despite this, the study reviewed for the chapter reports that by-and-large employees in the private sector are satisfied with their jobs – which to me just says a lot about how bad it was before. The public system pays more, and employees get more benefits, but there is little monitoring (due to lack of funds) and residents reported that service through the public system was not as efficient or reliable. Oddly, on the other hand, MCH goes to great lengths to monitor the private contractors and they have the power to deal out consequences and cancel contracts if anything goes wrong. I find it odd that the public system is willing to monitor contractors but not their own. Perhaps this is related to the fear that private companies (being for-profit) might be more likely to take advantage of residence? I don’t know. Another interesting part of the public/private dynamic is that contracts with the city are set up in such a way that it limits a contracting company’s ability to invest in new equipment like trucks or new cleaning technologies to make things more cost effective. With 10 month contracts, there it’s not worth the financial risk to buy new trucks and invest in workers, since contracts can be canceled too quickly.

In many ways, the system in Hyderabad works well. It appears to be better managed than the municipalities in Delhi or Mumbai, at least from what I have read so far. Still, a troubling trend remains. Slums and people living in unregistered parts of the city still receive very poor SWM services. So poor, in fact that much of the work that is done there is funded by …of all things, the British Government (working through local welfare organizations)

The main problem that seems to be plaguing the MCH is that outside the small fee collected for the VGDS program, there is no cost recovery for the SWM services. Suggesting a tax raise is too politically dangerous so it isn’t addressed. And so the MCH does what it can with funds from the national government of India the state government and their own pockets.

This week I’m tackling a much longer text (over 300 pages) so I’ll be taking it in small chunks over the next few weeks. I’m going chapter by chapter, so you should see at least a few summaries from me this week. The text is titled, ‘Solid Waste Management and Recycling: Actors, Partnerships and Policies in Hyderabad, India and Nairobi, Kenya’ edited by Isa Baud, Johan Post and Christine Furedy.

Technically I started with Chapter 2 for this book since Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2: Collection, Transportation and Disposal of Urban Solid Waste, tracks the history of privatization of social services such as SWM in India (And Kenya, but for the purposes of my research I’m just looking at India specifically). It follows India’s emphasis on industrialization after independence, the failure of heavily regulated, state run services and the call for privatization, which the prevailing theory being that private enterprise could serve the growing population better than the disorganized and overly bureaucratic central government.  Like other articles I’ve read addressing privatization of SWM services, the article addresses the pros and cons of such a system.

Interestingly, despite the government resistance to privatization (seen as a challenge to strong government authority and a threat to social welfare), at the time of the article’s publication (2004) the government was also hesitant to work with local CBOs and other local organizations even though they (At least on the small scale) have proven extremely successful financially. The article blames this resistance to the prevailing view that working with such organizations isn’t the way (Westernized) modern cities are run, hinting at one of the many lingering effects of Imperialism in India – The idea that “The West Does It Best”. Governments also fear that working with such informal institutions will make setting health codes and standards impossible making it impossible to prosecute any mishandling of services. These strong local organizations are thus under utilized.

The article also addresses how the emphasis in SWM in India remains on improving public health, not environmental awareness and how the leap has not been made to link the two as two sides of the same issue. Public health feels (to local governments) a responsibility well within their jurisdiction, whereas the multitude of environmental issues is easier to distance oneself from. Also, there is the not-so-secret fact that environmental regulations and standards cost money to implement and maintain, cutting down the bottom line (initially) and restricting economic growth – something that India has been trying to increase rapidly since the end of the 1980s. Public health maintenance also costs money, but Waste-to-Energy initiatives and sale of compost materials offset the cost and are actually the primary reasons private companies get involved in waste management in the first place. What ultimately exists is a conflict of interest between healthy environmental practices and economic growth.

The article lists 5 different types of privatization (Though does not provide a definition. I will make a point of looking them up this week):

• -Divestiture
• -Contracting
• -Concession
• -Franchise
• -Open Competition

Of these, Contracting and Franchise are listed as most commonly used in waste management.

There is also an exploration of the difference between ‘Collective Goods’ and ‘Private Goods’. Collective goods or services are those that are available to all and are difficult to deny access too (Police force, firemen, street cleaning). Private goods are held by individuals and their access can be restricted to anyone who (for example) can’t pay for them. Herein lies a delicate balance when it comes to waste management. If it’s purely privatized, companies can deny services to those who cannot afford them because private companies are for-profit ventures. Want someone to take your trash away at the end of the week but don’t have the cash? It’s going to stay out front your house indefinitely or until the government spends the funds itself to clean up, leading to an uneasy relationship between all three parties – Government, Private Company and Local.

Phew. And that’s just the first (second) chapter.

-Ashley

This week’s article, ‘Public-Community Participation in Household Waste Management in India: An Operational Approach’ by Snigdha Chakrabarti, Subhendu Chakrabarti and Amita Majumder analyzes a survey taken from the Baranagar Municipal area of Kolkata. This article touched on several issues that I am personally interested in, such as, how much do local communities know about government services (or lack thereof), what are they willing to do to improve the cleanliness of their neighborhoods and what motivates people to act. It also examines the ways in which integrated waste management systems have failed in the past and how they might be improved in the future.

The survey found that socio-economic status, education, scientific and environmental awareness, gender and age all effected whether residence were willing to adopt a waste separation program (Seperating waste into biodegradable and non) and whether they were willing to pay for extra services.

The article  stresses the need for balance. A system in which the government is in complete control generally ends up being expensive and inefficient, particularly in India’s case where tax revenue has not kept pace with the amount of services needed to address the growing waste volume.  On the other hand, a purely privatized system is motivated by profit, rather than providing a basic service for the benefit of society. In such a set up, one can imagine the needs of the people going unheeded, and corruption easy to come by. SWM systems run solely by community participants are not sustainable, because community members work on a volunteer basis and lack access to infrastructure and resources.

The article proposes an interesting integration: Have Government Municipalities provide infrastructure, dumping sites and accountability/monitoring, allow private companies to use these for a fee. They can cut costs further by selling biodegradable compost as fuel or fertilizer, and charge locals a fee for extra services.

It sounds like a good framework for a middle or upper-class neighborhood, but it seems to me that for poor areas and slums, you wouldn’t be able to charge locals for services even if they knew how beneficial the services were. The article doesn’t address this.

_____________

Aside from this article I spoke today with my Hindi tutor about pollution and waste management in India, and from our discussions and what I have read I can see two recurring trends – the Indian youth are spear-heading the movements to clean up India through awareness programs like Swatchh Bharat and it’s that very access to information that is slowly changing the tide in favor of a cleaner India.

Education and Awareness. If you want to get anything done people have to know about it. Seems obvious, but I can imagine myself trying to get people to appreciate the value of clean streets – as if it should be self evident – without realizing that my certainty didn’t appear out of a vacuum. Someone taught me the benefits of a clean house, clean streets, clean body etc. I learned in science classes about organic and in-organic material. So the Indian youth have hit the nail on the head and I will be eagerly watching their progress before my trip to India in the fall. I hope to connect with some of the organizers of Swachh Bharat and talk about their campaign.

-Ashley

Just a minor End-of-the-week update. I adjusted the banner image today. I was growing a little worried that despite my explanation for the name of the blog that it would be taken the wrong way. I thought that visitors to the blog might think that the “Dirty Hands” and “Clean Hearts” were in reference to Indians rather than to myself and others who want to help. I realized it could be perceived a kind of “noble savage” comment which is absolutely not what I intended. No one has made comments to me to that effect, but I’m trying to be as sensitive as possible to the possibility that my naivete can be problematic and counter-productive to my goals. Am I being overly PC? Maybe. But I’d prefer to err on the side of being culturally sensitive.

So, I lopped off the ‘s’ at the end of  “Hearts” in the hopes that it makes  a bit more clear I’m referring to myself. For a full explanation of the name of the blog you can visit the  “About” page.

I’m apologize if the name came across in a negative way.

Hello everyone,

In the wake of my recent success with the Add1Challenge, and my subsequent plans to go to India to further my research this year, I’ve decided I’m going to need help funding my trip so that I can do the best work possible while I’m there. Check the link below or more details, and if you can’t donate, please spread the word

-Ashley

https://www.gofundme.com/cmk3sz6s