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The stories behind the faces
“Nobody talks about the human side of [discarded] plastic… some of the world’s poorest pick it up in an attempt to make a living from it,” says Lee Mann, referring to the waste pickers who feel the effects of high price volatility and challenging working conditions the most. Hasiru Dala member Parveen Taj, who has been a waste picker since she was eight, confirms this. “Of all the waste we pick, plastic gives us the most income.”
During the CT trip, we learnt that the 1.5 million waste pickers in India are crucial to the formal waste management system. According to Hasiru Dala, the 35,000 independent waste pickers in Bengaluru collect 1,050 tonnes of recyclable waste every day, saving the city INR8.4 million, not to mention the environmental benefit of less waste on the streets, thanks to their door-to-door service. In fact, says Vishwanath C, a Hasiru Dala dry waste collection centre manager, “nothing goes to the landfill; the non-recyclables go to the cement factories to be used as fuel”, making the system truly sustainable.
Like Hasiru Dala’s oldest member, Indira, who represented waste pickers at a United Nations Event Conference in Indonesia, the NGO’s members have a lot to be proud of. Parveen has never been to school herself but her three children attend a private school. Annamma, who began picking waste at 10, is now a confident entrepreneur running a dry waste collection centre. “When I started [picking waste] about 30 years ago, there was barely any plastic. Cell batteries used to fetch a lot of money. We also had many rice sacks used to fill sugar; once empty we sold them,” says Annamma, witness to the steady rise in plastic waste. She is known as the first waste picker to buy a truck and now owns a house.
The Body Shop’s CT initiative has its roots in the philosophy of its founder — the late Dame Anita Roddick — of offering a hand versus a handout. This foundation has been strengthened by its recent acquisition by Brazilian cosmetics and personal care giant Natura. As the first public-traded company in the world to receive a B Corporation certification, Natura is believed to better represent the British brand’s activist stance than its erstwhile owner L’Oréal.
To date, there are 180 dry waste collection centres in Bengaluru, 34 of which are supported by Hasiru Dala. We visited a range of centres, from those owned independently to those subsidised by the government, to better understand how things are done. The first one was Shaktiman’s van unit, which sits next to some blocks of apartments. Waste is collected and segregated in a mostly open space by the 25 employees living on-site in accommodation that they constructed themselves.
Winds of change
Despite being the backbone of informal waste collection, for a long time, the majority of 1.5 million waste pickers in India were regarded as dalits or “the untouchables”. They were accorded little to no protection and operated in an unregulated industry. But this narrative is changing.
NGOs such as Plastics for Change, Hasiru Dala and HDI are creating an ecosystem where the key contributors to the sustainability of the waste sector are protected and can operate efficiently.
One example is Hasiru Dala’s crucial role in pushing for the occupational identity card issued by the state of Karnataka, acknowledging the job of a waste picker. “A large amount of what we do involves impacting and influencing policy and [awareness of the] general public,” says the co-founder of Hasiru Dala, Nalini Shekar. She also co-founded a waste picker union in Pune and received the Kempe Gowda Award and Star Award from the Asian Community in the San Francisco Bay Area for her social service.
Apart from no longer being considered “thieves”, a fundamental benefit is that this card allows the bearer to open a bank account, a matter of crucial importance, as discovered during India’s 2016 demonetisation, which made them even more vulnerable to unpredictable payments and made it harder for them to make ends meet.
The occupational identity card, however, is only applicable to people who have their origins in Bengaluru, and in a city with a high number of migrants, this poses a challenge. One example is Krishna’s employee, 48-year-old Rani.
Originally from Tamil Nadu, she now lives in a slum near a tin factory about 8km from the segregation centre. Although working here offers consistent payments, she does not enjoy the benefits of a cardholder.
Another win for the waste pickers came in the form of a definition of their role in the Solid Waste Management Rules in 2016. For a community that previously had no visibility in society, this was a big boost.
“The best moment in 2016, for me, was the legislative recognition of waste pickers. Behavioural change cannot do much without legislative change,” enthused Nalini in an interview. “Many people have a lot to say about waste management but there is [often] no voice from the people who are working in it.” Hasiru Dala fills this lacuna by ensuring these voices are heard.
Next up was Sivvasidayah’s segregation centre. Having visited both independent and government-subsidised centres, we noticed the glaring difference. Although also situated inside a building, the working conditions at this centre are considerably better. It has more ventilation and private investment has enabled the purchase of a machine, which allows waste to be segregated on a conveyor belt-like set-up. If anyone recognises the advantages of a well-managed and well-equipped centre, it would certainly be owner Sadashivaiah, 52, and his wife Maryamma, 48, both of whom had been picking waste from a very young age. Both hard workers, they make a good team and Maryamma, although equally shy, steps forward to speak with members of the media, much to the relief of her husband. She tells us that they picked waste together for over two decades before starting a small collection centre.
“Hasiru Dala approached us in our small shop and helped us scale up the business to what we have today. We still have the old shop; it is leased out. We won’t let it go as there are many memories there,” she says. For the past six years, they have been running their current centre with their three sons and a group of waste pickers, managing up to 1.2 tonnes per day. “We have to work hard to put food in our bellies. That’s just how our life is,” Maryamma says with a knowing smile.
Ultimately, like any other occupation, waste picking is a skill. It takes a lot of time and energy to understand the type and category of plastic, as we learnt the hard way when we gave it a go at an HDI aggregation centre. A board on the wall with sample bottles attached to it, serves as a guide to which type of plastic bottle makes the cut, but unlike us, the employees at the centre barely glance at it. Standing opposite each other around a conveyor belt, they work fast, swiftly distinguishing the bottles that are suitable for The Body Shop from the rest in the pile.
“We started with the motto of getting a better price for waste, starting with paper, Tetra Pak packaging and cardboard but we could not get a good price for plastic as there is a very small margin for it in the recycling industry. During the demonetisation period, the price went down from INR40 to about INR25,” explains business manager Krupa Rani, who holds a master’s in Environmental Science.
The Body Shop has invested in a label-removing machine that drastically expedites processes at this centre, which buys waste from scrap shops, van units and dry collection centres.
Aggregation is the last process to take place in the country before the label-free, flattened plastic bottles, now tightly packed into piles, are shipped to Europe, where recycling will take place amid more stringent food-grade recycled plastic regulations. “Our specifications are very strict; it has to be food-grade plastic so that it does not affect the formula of our products,” says Lee Mann.
Globally, waste management has become increasingly challenging due to the huge amounts being tossed out daily. But for anyone who questions the statistics, visiting these waste collection centres is bound to put those doubts to rest. It is difficult to not be affected by the sheer amount of waste — and the work that goes into managing it — and it made us realise just how important it is to be mindful of what we throw out. The Body Shop’s decision to use CT recycled plastic in its fully recycled packaging addresses this and, hopefully, over time the synergy between its partners as well as the system can be perfected to increase the amount from the initial 15% and across all packaging.
If the impact of Teddy Exports’ CT projects is anything to go by, then this recycled plastic initiative has big shoes to fill. The former’s successes include building crèches, junior and high schools that are attended by more than 1,000 children a year, Teddy Health Clinics with 20,000 registered patients, health initiatives that provide benefits to more than 29,000 people a year, veterinary camps that treat more than 15,000 animals locally, outreach programmes that educate the community on safe sex and tailoring courses for community sex workers.
This is yet another crucial step in The Body Shop’s journey to achieve its goal of doubling CT ingredients in its products — from 19 to 40 — by 2020, addressing not only the issue of plastic waste but also various socioeconomic woes, as have the many CT efforts before it, and providing a better future for a community of people leading lives built on waste.
Shalini Yeap is a writer with Options at The Edge Malaysia
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