Nobel Prize - Living Green in India

I return to subject of the environmental chaos in India - this is not a political statement but a continuation of what we have written about continuously for over 30 years. 

We are lucky today to live in the 4th most Living Green country in the world, Finland,

India comes in near the bottom of the global rankings at 168th place worldwide, and only Afghanistan (178th place) ranks below India in Southern Asia. Leading the region is Bhutan (107th), with relatively high scores in biodiversity & habitat protection. (Many Indians will claim that is a western conspiracy against India to run it down!)

Yesterday, I read in The Wire this article by Elisha Vermin:

‘If Only the Government Worked as Hard as Waste Pickers’

Hundreds of scrap dealers are recycling most of Delhi’s plastic waste while being on the run from the government.

Elisha Vermani

Bahadurgarh: Among the flurry of lush green farmlands at the Delhi-Haryana border, hundreds of scrap dealers are involved in the process of recycling nearly all of Delhi’s plastic waste tucked safely away from the city’s eyes.

A few kilometres from Tikri Kalan’s PVC market, one of the biggest legitimate plastic markets in Delhi, acres of agricultural land in Shiddipur and Lowa Kalan has been turned into an open plastic market. Each trader in this area deals with nearly 300-500 kg of plastic waste per day.

 

According to a report by the Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi generates over 600 tonnes of plastic waste daily. Most of this waste is brought to plastic markets like the one at Tikri where these dealers or aardhis segregate and reduce it to shreds before selling it forward. They are the most important link in the plastic recycling chain, and also the ones facing the most harassment.

Running nearly entirely as an informal economy, aardhis have the skill and eye to sort the waste without any chemical testing or lab equipment. All they need is empty stretches of land. However, they are constantly caught in a cat-and-mouse chase with the authorities. “First we were removed from Mundka, then from Kamruddin Nagar and they are still chasing us away even after we’ve crossed the Delhi border” said 38-year-old Rajesh, an aardhi at the Shiddipur market.

Rajesh and Bablu weren’t the only aardhis angry with the government. The huddle of two gradually swelled to about 15 men and a few women all expressing their frustration at the treatment they receive from the municipal corporation and National Green Tribunal officials. “They come and raze our temporary structures whenever they feel like it. I want to quit this profession now. If the government worked as hard as the waste pickers, the country would be elsewhere,” said 55-year-old Mangeram, who lost most of his business when he left the market at Mundka.

Aardhis believe that they are not the problem, but a solution to a problem. “The plastic is not going to decompose itself. If we don’t clean this mess then there will be heaps lying around in the city,” said 25-year-old Sonu, who works with his father at the market in Lowa.

Truckloads of plastic waste is unloaded at the market every few hours.

The aardhis told me that it’s not just Delhi’s waste that makes it way to these plastic markets. The government imports plastic waste, charges a custom duty on it and then the dealers pay an 18% GST on subsequent trading.

 

“Nobody is trying to shut down the bigger factories contributing to pollution in broad daylight because their owners can pay off the officials. We are preventing pollution on the other hand but nobody cares,” a 36-year-old aardhi who did not want to be named, said.

 

These traders work under the scorching sun without access to toilets or a clean resting place in the absence of a refuge away from the piles of waste. While they pride themselves on keeping Delhi “from coming to a standstill, trapped under its own garbage”, most of them seem to have lost hope and plan to move back to their villages if they face further harassment by government officials.

It is ironic that their contribution to waste management doesn’t guarantee them any financial or personal security. To quote Kaveri Gill, the author of Of Plastic and Poverty, who was one of the first few to document Delhi’s informal recycling markets: “If we can’t help them, leave them alone.”

Developed in collaboration with Ekaansh Arora. 

As I am, by profession, a Plastics Technologist, this article specifically interested me. Now that I am retired for over 15 years, the only subject in plastics I do still follow is the recycling of plastics as it is a highly controversial one. 

Plastics as a material is demonised rather than the people who misuse plastics.

When I was working in England at the British Rubber and Plastics Research Association (RAPRA) of Great Britain, one of my several projects was to counter the complaint by many professions, especially archiects that claimed that plastics did not have any durability!

One of my tasks was to prove to the the scientific world that plastics was a durable material. I searched all around England to find proof of the durability of plastics.

The oldest use of plastics I found then was an acrylic dome roof light system in the centre of London which had then lasted 30 years with no problems. 

This was documented in a paper "Weathering of Plastics" published in October 1968 in the journal Plastics which was authored by Dr. Crowder of the Building Research Station and myself. It shows a photograph that I captured during my time at the research centre.

Over the two years of my study, which took me across and up and down the English country, I found many uses of plastics which had withstood the elements and performed better than any comparable material. 

I stood on the roof of Wembley Stadium, confident that I was standing on a thin reinforced plastic sheeting with no loss in its strength as the sheer drop was many tens of metres!

I authored over 11 major reviews which covered all the plastics materials and their durability that were exposed to the elements.

That established the lovengity of plastics and should have been the guiding light to users that plastics was going to be a problem if it was used in applications where they would not be degraded! 

In 2022 the production of plastics was estimated as 450 million tonnes. Of this, it is estimated that 44% is used for packaging, a totally unnecessary waste of an most important resource!

Unfortunately, plastics became fashionable and started to be used in disposable packaging, something that should never have been permitted. The first step should have been that the use of plastics for packaging should have been subjected to the obsolescence law.

Today we are suffering the environmental consequences of the misuse of plastics.

When I returned to India I saw the use of plastics was becoming rampant in packaging. I took up this matter with the late Lavraj Kumar who was the Advisor to the Ministry of Petrochemicals. He listened but was powerless in the face of political pressure.

It was very appropriate those days to push the use of plastics for packaging of consumable foodstuffs as the losses due to infestation and rodents due to poor packaging and storage was enormous. 

Plastics became the life saver but it grew and grew unchecked with no control on the environmental impact.

But India had its own solution as the jerrypuranawalla moved street by street collecting the waste materials and these were then regenerated back to useful materials, going down the chain till finally it was used in non critical applications.

Hence, India had a solution and as can be seen from the map it topped the world in the recycling of plastics. 

I still remember driving in Bombay from Sion towards Chamber where, on one side of the road, there was a "plastics ghat" where used plastics film could be seen drying in the sun after washing till it was then sent for re-extrusion and generation into plastics granules for further use.

This scavenging and regeneration provided employment for many thousands of people around  the country. The chain was perfect as everyone benefitted financially.

The purpose should have been to develop this as a regular industrial activity with adequate input of technology, but it has stayed for generations in this unorganised fashion.

It is, therefore, no wonder that the recyclers of Delhi are treated as persona non-grata instead of valuable contributors to the Indian economy.

This 1993 article written by me, which appeared in ”Findians Briefings”called for "Western Recycling Doomed" was reposted in our blog in 2020.

When we wrote our blog entry "The Garbage Dump - India" we pointed out that the Environmental Minister of that time, Jairam Ramesh, had stated that India should be given the Nobel Prize for  the filth of the world!

If there is a Nobel prize for filth, India will win it: Jairam Ramesh

In this, plastics is a major contributor. 

If the authorities are not able to control it with the correct approach in technology, do not punish those who, by their own initiative, are trying to reduce the impact on the environment.

I firmly stand with the people, who despite all odds, are part of the chain reclaiming plastics in India!

Continuation of Blog Entry Western Recycling Doomed

 This is clear proof of our 1994 article "Western Recycling Doomed" in Findians Briefings, which was republished on this blog last year.

India recycles 60% of all plastics products whereas the USA, the largest consumer of plastics products, recycles just 9%.

The question is "WHY?"

The answer lies in motivation of the consumer.

Take this with the question why Finland recycles 98% o all plastics bottles, ther answer is self-explanatory. 

'Monetary motivation.

Even if the refund is just €0.20 per large PET bottle, the consumer knows the value for money and recycles the product. 

After large festival events, unemployed and hard-up students scour all the trash cans to pick up the empties which they convert to cash at almost all retail shops.

This is why in India, the thrifty housewife keeps all the recyclable waste and waits for the trash collector to come crying down the street and converts it to money.

There are several ways western countries can motivate the consumer to recycle all the waste generated in the course of their normal life. Any sane thinking government should explore the obvious possibilities.

However, to find sensible politicians is a rarity. Till then they will take stupid steps of banning plastics bags or other ridiculous solutions which will make no dent in the amount of plastics waste being generated or recycled.

Sadly, the plastics industry is tilting at windmills with their solutions. None of the players consider that plastics waste is an enormous resource and that this resource can be converted to a monetary stream for BOTH the consumer and the country!

Useless Terrorist profiling

This post should be under my JM Politics Blog, but I thought it important enough to get multiple exposure, so it is also posted on my main "Jacob's Blog".

I just read an excellent article in Think Progress, January 6, 2010, by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, and Alex Seitz-Wald: "TERRORISM: The Wrong Kind Of Profiling" (reproduced below, Copyright acknowledged) which highlighted how the right wing conservatives in the US and other countries are talking about ethnic and racial profiling, as they consider all Muslims as terrorists before they board an aircraft, etc.

TERRORISM
The Wrong Kind Of Profiling

Following the attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack by 23-year old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a public debate has erupted over the proper way to prevent terrorists and other criminals from endangering airline passengers in the future. While many politicians, pundits, and public policy leaders have engaged in responsible and rational discussions about the intelligence failures that allowed Abdulmutallab to bring bomb materials on an aircraft, a whole host of conservatives have endorsed racial and ethnic profiling that would seek out terror suspects simply on the basis of the color of their skin or religious identity. While many right wingers seem to be comfortable with succumbing to racist and nativist hysteria, the truth is that racial and ethnic profiling is tremendously ineffective. A more rational approach to profiling based on behavior -- rather than race or identity -- would help keep Americans safe while maintaining our civil rights and constitutional freedoms.

THE RIGHT'S EXTREMIST REACTION: It wasn't long after Abdulmutallab's failed attack that conservative pundits and politicians began to call for racial and ethnic profiling of people from Muslim backgrounds. Right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher argued for separate lines at airports to "scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed," which are some of the most common names in the world. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said, "One hundred percent of the Islamic terrorists are Muslim, and that is our main enemy today. So why should we not be profiling people because of their religion?" Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote a column on Human Events titled "On Terrorism it's Time to Know, to Profile, and to Discriminate," in which he claimed that "cultural sensitivities" are preventing security officials from stopping terrorism; the next day, Gingrich clarified his comments by saying he thinks that profiling should be based "on behavior, not ethnic ... [or] racial profiling." Perhaps the most brazen call for ethnic profiling came from retired Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, who declared, "If you are an 18 to 28-year old Muslim man then you should be strip searched. And if we don't do that, there's a very high probability that we're going to lose an airliner."

WHY RACIAL PROFILING DOESN'T WORK: The fact is that racial and ethnic profiling doesn't work. It creates a false sense of security and causes law enforcement resources to be wasted in chasing the wrong targets. As the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights' reports, racial profiling "diverts precious law enforcement resources away from investigations of individuals...who have been linked to terrorist activity by specific and credible evidence...[and] ignores the possibility that someone who does not fit the profile may be engaged in terrorism." Indeed, On Dec. 28, two Middle Eastern men were pulled off a flight heading to Phoenix because passengers reported they were engaging in suspicious behavior; it ended up that the men were simply speaking a Middle Eastern language. The same day, a Nigerian businessman was taken off an airplane because passengers became suspicious that he was lingering in the bathroom for too long. The FBI confirmed that the individual's behavior was due to a legitimate illness. It's important to note that terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and do not simply belong to one religion, ethnicity, or nationality. The "shoe bomber," Richard Reid, was Jamaican and British. Al Qaeda recruit Adam Pearlman was an American. Germaine Lindsay, one of London's 7/7 bombers, was Afro-Caribbean. Scott Roeder, who killed abortion-performing doctor George Tiller last year, was a white evangelical Christian. Racial profiling would, as Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council notes, extend our police dragnet over "potentially hundreds of thousands of [innocent] people every year" and drain precious resources away from other, more important security measures. And as a recent study by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science concludes, racial profiling has been no more effective than random screening in rooting out terrorists.

A BETTER WAY: While racial and ethnic profiling is a failed strategy that goes against our basic values, there are smarter profiling methods that police and other security officials can use to prevent acts of terrorism. A memo titled "Assessing Behaviors" circulated by law enforcement officials in October 2002 outlined such a strategy. One of the writers of the memo pointed out, "Fundamentally, believing that you can achieve safety by looking at characteristics instead of behaviors is silly. If your goal is preventing attacks...you want your eyes and ears looking for pre-attack behaviors, not characteristics." Former Bush counterterrorism officials have also objected to racial profiling and point out that looking for suspicious behavior is much more important. Former Bush CIA director Michael Hayden said that seeking out terrorists isn't "a question of ethnicity or religion." Rather, "it's what people do that we should be paying attention to." Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued that "relying on preconceptions or stereotypes is actually kind of misleading and arguably dangerous" because terrorists intentionally recruit people "who don't fit the stereotype." Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, suggests "effective profiling...is based on the analysis of the...behavior of a passenger and an inspection of the traveler's itinerary and passport; it does not and should not be based on race, religion, nationality or color of skin." As former Homeland Security press secretary Russ Knocke explained in 2006, security personnel are, and should be, trained "to look for abnormal human behavior. ... That is in no way racial profiling. That is behavioral profiling."

The article shows the stupidity of such an act as ethnic and racial profiling, as valuable resources are squandered.

It is my "contention of 1" that Al Qaida and other terrorist groups are flying out all sorts of schemes just to throw the entire security apparatus into a tizzy. The more failed attempts, the better for them, as the stupid security analysts start chasing shadows rather than real targets.

That pResident Bush went about wire tapping and searching his entire US population (just to stay ahead of his political opponents) shows how this sort of behaviour by a meglomaniac has squandered the valuable resources of an intelligence community.

Obama has fallen into the same trap. In his recent speech he talked about the failure to connect dots. The reason is that with one million or a billion dots to connect, even with super fast computers, this is impossible. It is easy to see this in hindsight!

During my recent trip to India I passed through so many security checks - Helsinki, London, Mumbai, Cochin, Bangalore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Delhi. Every single airport followed a different procedure. Every single airport failed to focus on the real problem - separating the real and honest traveller from the potential terrorist. Hence, 99.9% of the procedure was just a waste of valuable resources.

If I were a terrorist, one look at these illogical procedures would have given me 200 ways on how to beat the system. That is what Al Qaida and other terrorist organisations are focusing on.

The security analysts want to show us they are doing a great job (to get a greater allocation of financial resources and to show important they are), but all they are doing is following a set of useless procedures.

As one writer put it, soon we will be travelling on airplanes in the NUDE - but then they will need to do an internal body scan, so we will all be cut open before we get on the plane. Great news for surgeons!

Stupid? Well, that is how stupid the present procedures are, and everyone mutters, "Oh, this is to keep US safe!" (No pun intended!)


We are no safer now than we were 25 years ago. In fact, every new procedure the security analysts introduce makes us less safe as it cuts out one more method the terrorists would have considered. They will concentrate on other more effective methods while sending the security analysts barking up the billion wrong trees!.