Garbage in the city, by the roadside, and in the rivers is not the problem but a symptom of the problem. It is an indication that something is wrong.

The challenge of waste is not a new one. It started a while back its effects are becoming apparent now.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

It was the year 1997. Captain Charles Moore aboard his boat named Algalita. He had just finished a boat race on the Hawaii islands and was on the way home to California.

Instead of the regular route, he decided to traverse a longer path. This area of the Pacific Ocean is called a desert for the lack of fish in the area. The ocean currents do not make sailing a great experience either. It certainly is not a favourite spot for the vessels. The team travelled for a week without sighting any other boat.

Third day onwards however they began to see plastic waste in the water, a bottle lid here, a broken seal there. Eventually, the frequency increased and what they chanced upon on the seventh day of the travel shocked them.

It was like an island, an island comprised of garbage. It was huge. It was the size of four

Maharashtra states combined. Moore named it the ‘great Pacific garbage patch’.

Who dumped so much garbage here, wondered Charles Moore. How come the area completely devoid of vessels has such a huge garbage island? He assumed it might be the garbage dumped by the naval vessels.

He could not take that sight out of his mind. After two years, he returned fully equipped, with a team of scientists. They collected samples. Most of the garbage was plastic waste.

A study of samples revealed that almost 80% of the garbage was discarded as waste on the land. The garbage had traveled here through the streams, rivers, and ultimately the ocean currents.

Such garbage patches exist not only in the Pacific Ocean but everywhere. So much garbage in our oceans? How? Why?

Humans are not the only ones who utilize materials. Birds build nests using twigs, leaves, grass blades, and cotton. Sea creatures use Calcium carbonate to make protective shells around themselves. Plants harness Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for photosynthesis.

However, we are the only ones who cause pollution.

There are two factors to consider, material type and material quantity. Birds build a nest, lay eggs, eggs hatch, the chicks learn to fly and the brood goes away one day, leaving behind the nest. The abandoned nest withers with rain and wind, falls to the ground and returns to the soil leaving no trace.

A peak into our past reveals a similar story. We are not born with sharp nails and teeth. We devised tools to pluck fruits, dig out tubers, and hunt. The tools were made of stone, bones, or wood. The broken, discarded wooden or bone tool is used to decompose and return to the soil. The stone would continue withering and someday would become soil.

With the onset of the metal age, things did not change much since all metals are recyclable. A metal tool can be melted and converted into a new tool or artifact creating no waste.

The industrial revolution was the game changer. Machines increased our productivity by a multitude. We engineered various new materials that nature does not have a mechanism to process. They do not decompose in nature but continue piling up as garbage.

Back in the 18th century, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, it did not seem a challenge. Earth was too large, the oceans too vast to have any impact of our actions.

However, our capacity to impact nature increased every decade. Today all the municipalities in the world are grappling with the waste management challenge.

Pune City

Pune city faced many challenges; the city was invaded, and it was destroyed and rebuilt. The city that stood up to those challenges with a brave face now seems to be buckling under the ever-increasing waste.

What would be the situation a few years down the line?

Mission City Chakra Concept

Instead of creating waste and finding various ways to manage it; how about minimizing the

waste generation itself?

Mission City Chakra project began with this same objective with the vision of ‘A Clean and Healthy City by DESIGN’. It is a project by the Centre for Sustainable Development under the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics.

A leaf falls off the tree, decomposes, and returns nutrients to the soil. That’s the circular design in nature. A forest is a complex ecosystem with a multitude of processes yet no waste. In a circular design, the output of a process serves as an input to some other process.

We can design similar systems in nature so that nothing goes to waste.

Material Driven Strategy

Wet waste is already in the circular system because it is biodegradable. Steel though not biodegradable is in the circular system because it can be recycled into new products any number of times.

Plastic is neither biodegradable nor infinitely recyclable. Either directly or after 2-3 rounds of recycling, it becomes waste. It does not decompose but degrades into smaller and smaller

pieces called microplastics polluting the environment. Same is the case with cloth  like polyester and acrylic.

Most metals are infinitely recyclable and hence rarely end up as waste.

Glass is recyclable though challenge exists in its safe collection and transportation. Paper is biodegradable and recyclable.

Construction and Demolition i.e. C&D waste comprises of cement, concrete, bricks which is partially reusable, difficult to recycle.

The ‘R’ Framework

The R framework provides guiding principle for the material driven action. Actions are more resource-energy incentive and polluting as we move towards the right on the spectrum. Actions on the left of the spectrum are preventive while on those on the right are corrective.

Refuse and Reduce actions form the back-bone of zero-waste strategy. These two actions are preventive in nature and hence always the most effective in reducing waste.

Recycle action is the end-of-pipe intervention which attempts to bring the waste back into circulation as a resource or the raw material. From zero-waste point of view It is the last resort because recycling process creates pollution, consumes resources and energy.

Preventive actions involve change in behaviour and hence are difficult to implement. End-of- pipe actions are technological interventions that are readily accepted as onus is outsourced to the recycling agency and the technology.

Appropriate choice of R for a material depends on material’s

• Ability to be in the circular system
• Impact on our health and environment after its end-of-life

Impact Driven Decision

Plastic is neither biodegradable nor infinitely recyclable. Either directly or after 2-3 rounds of recycling, it ends up as waste.

It does not decompose however it degrades into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics polluting the environment.

Microplastics are already in our food chain. We eat, drink and breath in microplastic every single day.

What would be the situation if things continue as they are? What would be the state of the health and the environment in the future if nothing changes today.

When the impact of the material on human health and environmental health is severe like in case of plastic where recycling cannot provide a permanent solution, the appropriate strategy for such material is REFUSE and REDUCE.

• Refuse where possible
• Reduce the consumption where refusal altogether is not possible

New plastic products enter our lives every day and end up as waste sometime later. It is like a tap running at full force. Our city is drowning in the puddle of plastic waste. Recycling is like removing a spoonful from the puddle hoping to avert the disaster unfolding in front of us.

Recycling is simply a STOP-GAP solution. The actual solution is turning off the tap.