‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’. These are mantras we hear often whenever the garbage problem is discussed: but all three require commitment, a certain level of awareness, and concern for the environment. None of these seem immediately evident to the average person.
Normally we assume that all the re-saleable garbage we throw away will be picked up by rag-pickers. This is not always true. The rag-picker takes what he thinks has value or can be sold, not what we want him to pick up.
The much-touted ‘source segregation’ method to separate the bio-degradable from the non-biodegradable garbage (usually packaging) continues to see patchy success for various reasons. Coercive methods of penalties and fines are not easily implementable in a democratic polity. The result: many of our cities are eyesores, with garbage strewn around. And waterways are heavily polluted with floating junk, causing enormous problems for citizens and animals alike.
Source segregation
One way to prevent people throwing away things — and get them to ‘source-segregate’ — is to ensure that the discards have a value attached to them that is ‘redeemable’ soon. Have you ever found a discarded ten paise coin or a one rupee note lying on the road? Never, or maybe once or twice in your lifetime? Well, the truth is that one rarely comes across people discarding even a ten paisa coin as ‘useless’. However, we find people throwing away much more valuable stuff — in terms of the price they may fetch — labelling them junk; Mostly packaging, items half-used or old. Why is it that a person who hesitates to throw away even a ten paisa coin has no qualms when it comes to discarding ‘junk’ that may be worth more?
This paradox is easily explained. The ‘junk’ comes without an immediately assignable value attached and is not exchangeable the way a coin can be. We will not discard anything that has a ‘monetary’ value attached to it, however small. But if we do not know the value of something, we will throw it away without a thought.
Take an example. Like coins we rarely throw old newspapers into the garbage bin; we would rather sell them to the ‘raddi-wallah’ as we know they will fetch returns. But used cans, polythene bags, packaging? We are not so sure, and so they add to the hundreds of tonnes of garbage our cities generate.
So how do we make everyone feel garbage has value? Can we do this by assigning a monetary value that the consumer could encash and that the producer of the goods or its packaging would be required to pay to anyone who returns it to him?
Some institutions, cities and countries across the globe have tried this successfully. I found a similar system implemented effectively at the Mysore zoo. Anyone who wants to take in a bottle of water into the zoo has to pay Rs. 10 at the entrance. At the exit the money is returned if the empty bottle is turned in. If you throw away the bottle you lose Rs. 10. The attendant disbursing the amount at the exit told me, with a grin, that he rarely came across a case where a person threw away the bottle, not caring for the amount he would get back on surrendering the bottle.
Now go to any other zoo in India: you will find people discarding their used bottles, plastic bags and so on at will and right inside the zoo, without bothering about cleanliness, aesthetics or animal safety and health; no amount of threats, notices, education, requests or cajoling seem to work. But the Mysore example shows the moment a value is attached to that empty bottle or packing, there is virtually 100% compliance because keeping it safely and returning it to a designated location implies a monetary benefit!
Assigning a ‘monetary value’ to garbage, however, cannot be arbitrary: it has to have a method behind it. Some municipal bodies have tried to ‘purchase’ recyclable junk but this needs funds, and there are logistics involved. Both problems can be solved by taking recourse to the principle of ‘polluter pays’ — in this case both the producer and consumer of the goods are polluters and so both should pay or be held responsible for its disposal.
In the age of e-commerce, every single delivery entails packaging that is virtually useless to the buyer once he has unwrapped it and extracted the purchased goods from it. Packaging comprises a large volume of garbage. Suppose we were to assign a value to packages in general (say at 0.1% of the value of the goods) with a minimum at 10 paisa (for, say, shampoo sachets) imagine what a lot of care people would take to keep the packages safe! The producer of the goods would have to cough up this money that would be mandatorily payable to anyone who returns the packaging. If every single piece of packaging material or container — cardboard boxes, plastic packages and bags, sachets — had a value printed on it with a message … we will end up capturing most of the garbage at source.
Another way
For non-branded goods and packaging, a separate dispensation will be needed. Unlike a zoo where entry and exit can be regulated, a person may buy stuff that he discards elsewhere. Hence we would require the value of the packaging to be included in the price and mentioned specifically. As the consumer would have paid the amount upfront, the producer should have no problem paying him once he returns it.
We may require a regulatory framework and institutional arrangements for this to happen. We could perhaps start experimenting with such alternatives at least in the major cities before our garbage woes come to assume monstrous proportions.
The author is in the IAS. Views are personal. tkrias2010@gmail.com
