What Is The Size Of The Opportunity To Recycle In India?

Industrialisation in India, following the advent of technology from the developed world, needed time and partnerships. But over the last three-and-a-half decades, India has developed its services industry, which has been the major contributor to exports.

To enhance manufacturing, Indian governments have taken multiple initiatives, the latest being the Make In India mission and the incentives that are provided to Indian manufacturers on procurement done over the Government e-Marketplace (GeM).

Circular Economy Principles

Catering to the demand of the huge populace requires resources, both natural and man-made. India has been a resource conscious country over the ages. Citizens still discard waste from their houses to informal kabadiwalas (garbage pickers) and demand that they get paid for the estimated resource value embedded in the product.

This would result in a significant percentage of recycling — embedding the principles of a circular economy in India's urban, household garbage disposal — long before the term had been coined and came into fashion. 

However, with growing consumerism, the behaviour of disposers, especially in urban India, has begun changing.

Circular economy principles that were once embedded as social values, have given way to a linear economy, especially in garbage disposal.

As a result, the value of the resource is less of a consideration at the time of its disposal. For urban residents, the biggest cause of concern nowadays is the optics of garbage dumps. 

The Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has played a proactive role in developing policies for ensuring that circular economy principles become the cornerstone of managing waste in the country.

Waste Streams Needing Immediate Attention

Valuable waste streams — where significant resources are embedded, including electronics and vehicles — have specific sets of rules to ensure implementation of a circular economy.

The Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework places obligations on manufacturers and producers through targets to ensure collection and channelisation of waste created from consumption of products that they put on the market.

This is the first step towards ensuring that recyclers are able to extract resources and channelise them back into production. 

India generated an estimated 65 million tonnes of solid waste a year, according to a 2022 report by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA). This comprises of both organic and inorganic waste.

Organic waste or wet waste can be converted into manure or compost and channelised back to agriculture or horticulture use. As the population grows, it is set to generate 165 million tonnes of waste by 2030 and 436 million tonnes by 2050.

The dry waste can be recycled or reused to ensure resource savings. Other key waste streams generated include e-waste, end-of-life vehicle waste, plastic waste, tyre waste, battery waste, which have now been placed under the EPR framework to ensure that incentives are provided to such recyclers so that resources can be extracted and channelised back to manufacturers. 

The informal sector is at the heart of waste management in India. These actors collect, sort, segregate, dismantle and recycle waste. However, lack of use of technology and processes leads to inefficiency in resource extraction, coupled with environmental pollution and degradation.

The population of India is a large consumption base for resources, which, through products, reach their end of life. Managing end-of-life processes ensures that these resources can be channelised back to producing new products, powering the manufacturing sector in India while ensuring sustainable development. 

Loss of resources through inefficient extraction and their channelisation into the informal sector also causes loss of revenue for the government.

Estimates from studies undertaken by OpenGATE Global suggest that these losses could be to the tune of Rs 80,000 crore from just four different waste streams including plastics, batteries, e-waste and end of life vehicles. 

How Big Can India's Recycling Biz Be?

The size that the opportunity presents is immense. Millions of informal workers collect, channelise and recycle waste across the country.

Formalisation of these actors can be a way to ensure that resources from these waste streams are extracted using environmentally sound technology and channelised back into production processes to achieve success in the Make in India mission.

Skilling and capacity development are other areas which can be enhanced so that these actors are able to ensure that their work does not pose a hazard to their health and the environment. 

The service sector in India has played a dominant role in ensuring high-paced growth and development in the country. The Government of India has been investing in ensuring that the infrastructure of the country improves by leaps and bounds.

It is time that manufacturing steps up to take the country into Amrit Kaal over the next 25 years. Waste which is generated by 1.4 billion citizens, when used as a resource, has the ability to power this dream. 

This is the second installment of a monthly column on waste management in India.

(The writer is the innovation and R&D chief at Opengate Global Enterprises, and an expert in circular economy and e-waste management. Views are personal)