Zero Waste Kovalum

Zero Waste Kovalum, Kerala: Meeting with Jayakumar Chelaton Director of Thanal & visit to the Zero Waste Centre

The Zero Waste Centre in Kovalum comprises micro enterprises making products from waste materials and a training centre to support such enterprise development. A great project has evolved with a fascinating story that in 2007 resulted in the President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, releasing an action plan declaring a vision for Zero Waste in Kovalum by 2012.

Zero Waste Kovalum

Kerela became a popular tourist destination in the 1980’s and with no physical or regulatory infrastructure to handle the increase in tourism the rubbish mounted up. By the late 1990’s the number of tourists dropped significantly due to the pollution caused by mounds of garbage and plastic bag clogged cesspools. So in 1998 a 30 tonne/day incinerator was proposed by the Department of Tourism to deal with the waste problem.

At this time Thanal a small biodiversity conservation NGO were working with 25-30 villages negatively affected by Endosulfan a Persistent Organic Pollutant (POP), this chemical spray causes endocrine disruption, birth defects and cancer). Thanal were looking for academic research to enable them to undertake an epidemiological study which ultimately would result in the ban of this toxic chemical. Their research networked them with the Stockholm Convention network, and to a conference where they found the academic research they needed and were introduced to toxicology, pollution related issues, campaigning and advocacy.

In 1999 alongside Greenpeace and Equations, Thanal launched a campaign against the Kovalum incinerator, this would change the face of waste in Kerala. The campaign was local and grassroots and also called on international support, a successful approach, resulting in Kerala Tourism Department shelving the scheme in 2000, and encouraging Thanal and Greenpeace to come up with a progressive solution to deal with the waste problem in Kovalum.

By 2000 Zero Waste Kovalum was conceived at Waste Not Asia, a conference on alternatives and what they could look like, Zero Waste Kovalum would be the pilot project that would demonstrate what was possible within a locality. The leaders of Thanal envisioned a solution that didn't just seek to find a place to store waste, but to design waste out of the system through a combination of waste prevention, re-use, recycling, and composting. Later in the year at Johannesburg GAIA (Global Anti Incineration Alliance www.no-burn.org) was formed and pledged their support to Kovalum.

Thanal are not a grassroots operational organisation, they work on strategic interventions and policy tools to achieve their goals; running an operational pilot project was out of the ordinary for them. However, they utilised their skills and set about documenting international scenarios, drawing on best practice models and Zero Waste experts, including the ‘mother’ of Zero Waste Kerala, Annie Leonard (www.storyofstuff.com) who continues to provide them with support and expertise.

In 2001 funds were secured to undertake a nine month study into waste generation and disposal patterns, this enabled the impact of the monsoon and tourist seasons to be accounted for and also highlighted the dubious waste generation data presented by the incinerator industry (estimated at 30 tonnes/day, the actual figure was considerably less, with almost 4 tonnes/day of biodegradable waste from 100 hotels and restaurants).

Thanal, Greenpeace, Kerela Hotel & Restaurants Association, and Dept of Tourism then organised skills share, Towards Zero Waste Kovalum. Kovalum stakeholders were engaged and experts were brought in, the result the start of a Zero Waste plan that focused on upstream management of waste and recyclables. For example: Cleaning the water supply & providing potable water and refillable bottles, thereby preventing the generation of plastic bottle waste. Biogas plants for handling biodegradable materials, and women’s groups expressing an interest in producing replacements for plastic products using natural locally available materials.

This 2 day engagement and planning event raised some interesting points. After thirty years of tourism, there had been no opportunity for women, they were cleaners and a lucky few receptionists, they wanted opportunity for enterprise, a gender balance and to reclaim the beach –a social revolution was emerging. All that was missing was a delivery vehicle for these pilot projects, Thanal were not an operational organisation in this sense, and felt that they had no expertise to deliver, but with no other contenders they were the obvious choice.

Ther Kovalum Resource Recovery Programme has two components, Resource Recovery Parks for non-biodegradables and biogas plants for biodegradables. Between 2003 – 2006 Thanal set up 3 biogas plants, vermin-composting (worms) and composting projects, 25 out of the 100 hotels and restaurants were cooperating. Others that were difficult to engage included lease hold establishments and small operators. All other waste that was collected prior to Thanals pilots was taken to a failing centralised composting facility that accepted mixed residual waste.

Post 2006, Thanal had demonstrated the art of the possible, convinced the council that there were some viable projects and solutions, Thanal then withdrew, needing to focus on their research, development and advocacy work so the delivery of the programme was now left to the council and contractors. Thanal have continued to support local sustainable organic agriculture, providing training and support to local communities.

Thanal’s approach has been strategic, post 2006 this was much easier as they were not involved in day to day delivery, Thanal won over the support of local politician and educated and engaged the community. Their strategic interventions resulted in policy changes, fiscal incentives, strategy documents and implementation plans, best practice manuals and the roll out of the programme to Kerala and 5 other regions – with a focus on rural employment, tourism and waste management. Thanal were able to achieve in one year what had taken 5 years in Kovalum.

Some of Thanal's achievements include:

• Implementing facilities that use biodegradable wastes from hotels to generate electricity. The facilities separate biodegradable discards, and then instead of tossing them into a stinky landfill, uses them in a fermentation process to generate methane gas (bio-gas), which then can be used in a generator to produce electricity. The initiative convinced hotels to operate in clusters and set up three bio-gas units that diverted one ton of garbage per day from the landfill into meeting energy needs. There are now more than 25 such facilities in municipalities throughout the state.
• Creating a Zero Waste Center to make sustainable materials. The Center promotes handmade products made from paper, jute, coconut shells, and cloth discards as substitutes for plastics and other unsustainable materials. Three entrepreneurial units now are run by local women who make the products and sell them to local restaurants and hotels to replace disposable plastics, and to tourists as souvenirs. The Center has generated 200 jobs, a significant number for this small community.
• Promoting Zero Waste principles for the broader community. Education is a key component of the Zero Waste plan. Education campaigns are aimed at hotels, local vendors, and schoolchildren. The project also educates tourists, with the intention that they will take these concepts and practices back to their home countries and states, which tend to have even greater waste and consumption problems than those in Kovalam.

International POPs Elimination Programme Case Study of Zero Waste Kovalum: A progressive waste management programme with focus on the best available technology options and materials substitution www.ipen.org

A Handbook on Waste Management in Rural Tourism Areas: A Zero Waste Approach
http://chm.pops.int/Portals/0/docs/batbep/sao_paulo/2_Resources/Handbook%20on%20Waste%20Management_A%20zero%20waste%20approach/Handbook%20on%20Zero%20Waste.pdf

ZERO WASTE CENTRE

Mumbai Day 2

Maharashtra Nature Park, Mumbai

First stop of the day... we thought that this was going to be a city farm and community composting project in action, but this is an aspiration rather than a reality at the moment. The Maharashtra Nature Park (MNP) is owned by the council and run by the Maharashtra Nature Park Society, it is a landfill reclamation facility covering 37 acres. The MNP has in the past had composting on site which was managed in-house, this stopped following monsoon floods which resulted in contaminated land that killed off the worms and other organisms. Composting has not been restarted at scale since.

Anil, is trying to develop a composting project here and has a working group of around 6 people who meet fortnightly to ‘compost’ (see below*). The aim of this project will be to supplement the Daily Dump home composting programme, providing a composting facility for local residents. Anil is the product developer of Daily Dump, an informative guide and home composting kit comprising, terracotta compost pots, rake, activator & Neem powder. There are two main product choices, the ‘leave-it pot’ and the Kambha (Moto Lota, Patta Kambha, Gamla), a large lidded pot, intended for semi composted material storage or green waste composting and a 3 tiered modular unit that manages kitchen waste.

The composting process is more of an experimental learning experience, with five 1m x 1m by 1 brick high units. The brick enclosure comprises a soil base which had a mixture of shredded leaves and grasses on the top, like a mulch, seedlings are grown on this substrate – see pic...

Mumbai University

Then to Mumbai University where we met with Jottie, a fabulous lady who works for XXXXXX, empowerment of women through enterprise opportunities. She was busy running the women’s international playwright conference, hence a quick overview and no project visit. Jotti works with women in Dharavi, she has managed to get contracts with the local council for the delivery of waste services and is doing a great job in developing a social economy in Mumbai. She uses the Daily Dump products and also operates 6 residential biogas plants in Mumbai. Jotti is part of the Waste Picker delegation who will be attending COP15 in December, expect more information on these activities then.

The Dharavi Recycling Precinct

3^rd November

We were met by our guide (from the Acorn Foundation) at Mahim train station close to the city within the city, that is known as the Dharavi slum. Dharavi covers 223 hectares of land, is home to over 1 million people and with a diverse range of industries and communities, it generates $1.4 billion in revenues each year. The intention of the visit was to see the recycling precinct, we got much more, meeting the rag pickers, segregators, reprocessors and brokers, seeing the operations at work and drinking chai, of course.

The first thing you notice upon entering Dharavi is the energy, activity and resourcefulness of the people, and the plasticised aluminium packaging on the floor. The place is a hive of activity, lots of businesses, street stalls selling a variety of food and drinks, many people and goats, and in between this, rickshaws and trucks squeezing there way through. As we walked through the narrow lanes you notice the overwhelming range of activities, from stripping down crash helmets, car parts, shoes, washing machines, other white goods, electrical items, wooden items, ball point pens, the list goes on. Everything and anything of value has already been collected by the community to be sorted and processed before being taken to a buy back trader, if there is no end market (value) it is left on the ground.

Our first stop off was an outdoor sorting area accessed by walking across a huge sewage pipe under the bridge that crosses Mahim Creek, adjacent to the pipe were small shacks connected to the sorting area. Sacks of materials that are collected by rag pickers or dropped off by trucks are thrown from the road, dropping down several feet to this sorting area, where groups of men and women strip the plastics from the remnants of computers, and wash the granulated plastics. The people we met here were members of the Acorn Dharavi Project and included some committee members. The Acorn project is working to get the rag pickers recognised by Government, to improve their working conditions and social status. These people are the recycling industry of Mumbai and their achievements are huge, there are over 15,000 single room factories, over 80% of Mumbai’s plastics are reused or recycled here, and employment opportunities created for over 250,000 people.

Then the the warehouses, with our guide, a committee member from the Dharavi Projects.

The first warehouse opened up into an area where plastics were being granulated, bags of pre-sorted plastics were poured into the hopper and granulated plastics were collected in another sack, ready for washing. you couldn’t see beyond a few meters as bags of these sorted plastics piled high blocking the view of the rest of the warehouse. Our guide effortlessly climbed up and over these sacks, beckoning us to follow, and here was the sorting area. 5 people squatted on the floor, these were the segregators of plastic bottles, containers, breaking down items into component parts, ball point pens, toys, coat hangers, just about anything you can think of that is made from plastic (except film plastics). A great welcome & time to stop for chai...

In another warehouse on the ground floor we saw the plastics being sorted into type, granulated & washed as before. Flaked plastics were dried on the hot tin roofs before going through quality control on the second floor, where coloured pieces were removed from the flake – this ensures high quality and the best prices for the materials. The dry sorted plastics are then sacked and stacked ready for the brokers. The view from the rooftops was amazing, more storage space for stuff, in Dharavi every space conceivable is being utilised.

At his Dharavi site, Mr Upendra a trader in the fibre markets oversees the baling of card and paper collected from Mumbai by the rag pickers. As part of the Acorn project he guarantees a price based on quality. He also provides a brokerage service between generators, usually large businesses in Mumbai and end markets (paper mills) in India. The group of companies operated by the family also includes hand-made paper products made from the recycled paper collected in Mumbai, a great example of closed loop recycling.

Dr Dan Knapp (Urban Ore) would refer to Dharavi as a Serial Resource Recovery Park, comprising a collective of collection points segregation and reprocessing warehouses and storage facilities for all different source separated plastics, paper, card, electrical items, textiles etc that either get sold to end markets or used in the manufacture of new products in Dharavi.

Pollution & hazardous materials are an issue, there is no pollution control and this is an area that in places could do with attention.

Dharavi is a community at risk of losing homes and livelihoods, the city of Mumbai like many other rapidly growing cities is running out of space to develop and Dharavi is on the agenda for redevelopment. When reading the rhetoric surrounding the £2 billion redevelopment proposals the Government claims they will provide 300 sq ft to all ground floor residents, if they have papers to prove they lived there prior to 1995, which they don’t have, and over 25,000 residents live on the first or second floors, they will not be recognised either.

Another factor that is threatening these peoples livelihoods is the risk that investment in waste management facilities, will take the form of mechanised Material Reclamation Facilities and final disposal solutions (incinerators) like those we see in the UK. Incineration is more polluting than coal fired power station, so this is not good news for climate change and with more proposals coming forward for funding through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for such projects, is not good news for livelihoods, homes, employment, innovation and carbon reduction.

Links

Acorn Foundation Dharavi Project (http://www.dharaviproject.org/)