Farmers Movement Archive

Kabadiwalas go missing, recycling chain broken in Delhi

NEW DELHI: When was the last time you saw the kabadiwala making the rounds of your locality? It must have been prior to the lockdown. Experts monitoring informal recycling sector are worried that the recycling chain — from wastepickers and kabadiwalas to sorting and recycling units — is now in complete disarray. The lockdown restrictions, migration of labour and lowering of global crude petroleum prices have had an adverse effect on the sector. In Delhi alone, 2-3 lakh informal wastepickers and recyclers are estimated to be engaged in the business with the key centres located in Tikri Kalan, Bawana, Mundka, Bhalswa, Ghazipur and Mandoli. Chitra Mukherjee said the Covid lockdown has impacted the recycling sector more than others. The head of advocacy and policy at NGO Chintan, which works extensively with the wastepicker community, elaborated, “International oil prices have crashed, making virgin plastic cheaper and rendering recycled plastic financially unviable. Recycled plastic used to do well because virgin plastic was expensive.” Environment experts are urging Delhi government to provide Covid relief to wastepickers, on the lines of those given to construction workers and vendors, because there are no buyers for the recyclable materials they collect. The city’s estimated 50,000 ragpickers play a critical role in reducing the burden on landfills, keeping waste management sustainable and promoting recycling and segregation. They carry out 95% of the recycling in Delhi and prevent 3.6 times more greenhouse gases than any project in India that gets carbon credits. Jay Prakash Choudhary, secretary of Safai Sena, a grouping of over 12,000 waste collectors, junk dealers and recyclers, said the sector has been financially wrecked to the extent that many have left the city. “While the government did not help, residents did not allow our members to collect waste. Units that bought the collected material have also closed down,” he said. Swati Sambyal, Delhi-based expert in solid municipal waste management, said the absence of kabadiwalas in colonies showed that inter-linkages in the informal recycling have been disrupted. “Incentivising people is one way to ensure that these players return to business, while training low-skill recyclers will create an asset,” Sambyal suggested. “We should now explore plans to establish domestic recycling units and look at decentralised holistic solution to revive the informal economy” The current environment is a risk to those who are still engaged in waste collection. “While hospital employees have been trained to dispose of biomedical waste, the trash generated in containment zones is a health hazard. It is important to brief waste collectors and establish a monitoring mechanism,” advised Dr Rajat Arora, cardiologist and co-founder, Genestrings Lab.

The Times of India

2020-06-26

Delhi