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The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is a step in the right direction for India. But the rates on certain goods are a deep cause of concern. These include scrap material. Before GST, there was no tax on scrap material except on e-waste and metals (6 per cent Value Added Tax). Under the new GST regime, all categories of scrap now have a high tax rate of mostly 18 per cent. Scrap material GST rate Plastic 18% Rubber 18% Glass 18% Iron/ copper/ Aluminium/ tin (Any metal waste) 18% Paper 12% E- waste (Batteries, machine etc.) 18% Vivek, a kabadiwaala (scrap-seller) in Dwarka, New Delhi told Down To Earth: “Due to GST on scrap, our work has reduced because the customer/ waste generators are now getting lesser rates for their recyclable waste. They are looking for better prices elsewhere or just throwing away their waste. Earlier, if we were getting 2.5 quintal per month of paper, now we are hardly getting 2 quintals.” What does this mean for the recycle econ...

Potato peel and fruit pomace (solid remains), generally thrown away as waste, can be turned into packaging material for food products like bread, Indian scientists have demonstrated. Scientists at the Tezpur University in Assam have made thin biopolymer films from potato peels and fruit waste to store food items. The films are 0.3 millimeters thin and can withstand temperatures as high as 200 degree Celsius. They have good breakage strength and elongation capacity. Moreover, they are biodegradable and can be used to store perishable foods such as bread. Potato peel and sweet lime pulp, collected locally, were used for the study. The peel was washed, dried and then grounded to make a fine powder. After chemical treatment, it was poured into glass petri plates and cast into thin biopolymer films. It was cross-linked using calcium chloride to increase strength. During the process, it was also treated with ultrasound waves for 60 minutes that helped in breaking down the polymer partic...

The federal government recently announced that it is giving recycling company ResourceCo a loan of A$30 million to build two waste-to-fuel plants producing “solid waste fuel”. The Conversation Waste-to-energy is an important part of the waste industry in Europe. Significant demand for heat means efficient and tightly controlled waste incinerators are common. However, Australia lacks an established market, with low levels of community acceptance and no clear government policy encouraging its uptake. But the federal announcement, coupled with an uptake in state funding, a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry and several new projects in the pipeline, signals a growing interest in waste-to-energy and waste-to-fuels. But what is solid waste fuel, and where does it fit in a sustainable future for Australian waste management? What are solid waste fuels? Australians are becoming more wasteful. The amount of rubbish we produce is growing more rapidly than both our population and our...

An analysis done by CSE on the results of the Swachh Survekshan, 2017 shows that the top 3 cities in the survey – Indore, Bhopal and Vishakhapatnam – have adopted environmentally unsustainable practices for waste management. The cities are focussing on collection of unsegregated waste and transporting it to landfills, with a very minimal quantum of waste being processed. All three cities are dumping unsegregated waste. These cities are, therefore, not meeting the statutory requirements of the Municipal Solid Waste Rules (MSW Rules), 2016. The MSW Rules, 2016 clearly state that waste needs to be segregated into three categories at the household level – wet, dry and domestic hazardous waste. Further the Rules stipulate that waste to energy plants shall not burn mixed waste. The Rules also put disposal at landfills as the least preferred option. What becomes clear is that the states that have pushed for a centralised approach towards waste management – Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and And...

The much awaited results of Swachh Surveskshan 2017 shall be out tomorrow (Thursday, May 4). In the survey commissioned by the Ministry of Urban Development during January–February this year, over 3.7 million citizens responded to a set of six questions giving their perception of sanitation situation in cities and towns. Besides, 421 assessors of Quality Council of India have physically inspected 17,500 locations in 434 cities and towns. Moreover, 2,680 residential locations, 2,680 commercial locations and 2,582 commercial and public toilets were inspected in these cities and towns for on-the-spot third-party assessment of ground level sanitation status. Under the survey, 500 cities and towns with populations of more than 100,000 were being evaluated and ranked on the basis of cleanliness and other aspects of urban sanitation. However, rankings of 434 cities and towns will be announced on Thursday. On May 2, the Ministry of Urban Development said that its findings suggest over 83 ...

Researchers at the University of Cambridge recently found that moth caterpillars can digest a plastic shopping bag. Scientists say this discovery could lead to a biotechnical approach to address environmental pollution caused by plastic. Federica Bertocchini, a scientist with the Spanish National Research Council and an amateur beekeeper had plucked parasites out of beehives and kept them in a plastic bag. When Bertocchini saw that the plastic bag had holes in it, she approached Paolo Bombelli and Christopher J. Howe from the University of Cambridge. A report published in Current Biology observes that in an experiment conducted by the group, 100 caterpillars devoured a polythene bag in 40 minutes. The authors say that some enzymes were involved in breaking down polyethylene, which is used widely in plastic bags and packaging and takes hundreds of years to decompose. Whether the enzyme is produced by the worm or by the bacteria in its gut is still unclear. The worm (Galleria Mellon...

In Ethiopia, seven in every 10 people use toilets instead of defecating in the open. While this may not sound like much of an achievement, to grasp the true import of the statistics one has to consider that some 25 years ago, less than one in every 10 Ethiopians used toilets. The African country, in fact globally, registered the maximum reduction in the proportion of the population defecating in the open between 1990 and 2015, as per the Joint Monitoring report of 2015 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef. The extent of the achievement becomes even clearer when one compares the figures with India, whose per-capita gdp is four times that of Ethiopia. In 1990, less than three in every 10 people in India used toilets. Despite several nationwide campaigns and celebrity endorsements to create awareness about sanitation, only six in every 10 Indians use toilets. So how did Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world, achieve the results? Ethiopia’s success lies in t...

Government continues to give emphasis on the number of toilets built as an indicator of villages becoming open defecation-free (ODF). This was again proved when Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about the state of sanitation of the villages along the River Ganga in an exhibition titled ‘"Swachhagraha ‘Bapu Ko Karyanjali’ - a Mission" on April 10 in New Delhi. According to Modi, around 75 per cent of the villages along the river are open defecation-free. If we go by the statistics given by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS), then this number matches very closely with the number of household toilets constructed till 2016-17 in the villages along the Ganga. Thus, it is clear that the ministry is still correlating the number of toilets built with open defecation-free status of villages. In 2015-16, 701 villages were declared ODF on the basis of number of toilets built. In 2016-17, around 3709 villages (almost five times) were declared ODF. It means th...

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) recently came out with a response on action plan submitted by states for Solid Waste Management (SWM). This was following a National Green Tribunal (NGT) order dated December 22, 2016 to 35 states/union territories (UTs) of India to submit their state action plans for solid waste management to the CPCB. Out of 35, only 25 states and two UTs have submitted their respective State Action Plans and eight states/UTs are yet to respond to the CPCB for action plan. It has been exactly a year since the Solid Waste Management Rules (SWM), 2016 were notified by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC). Under the section 6(b) of the MSW rules 2016, all the state governments and UTs had to prepare an action plan within six months from the date of notification of these rules. The plans were submitted long after the six-month deadline lapsed. Timeline of events NGT, in its order dated December 22, 2016, directed every sta...

Most of us never bother to know where the garbage from our households and localities ends up. It is forgotten once packed in dustbin bags and left for the municipality to dispose of. But the fact is most of the refuse keeps accumulating in our neighbourhoods, decomposing, giving rise to unbearable stench and emitting harmful gases, such as methane, volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Data with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) shows that India generated 0.14 million tonnes of municipal solid waste a day in 2016. Of this, 60-70 per cent was collected. Since most municipal landfills lack waste treatment facilities, only a small amount—23 per cent of the collected waste—was treated. Young entrepreneurs in the country are now tapping into this void through a range of innovative solutions, and are converting waste into valuable resources, that too in eco-friendly ways. Resource in garbage Green Nerds Solutions Pvt Ltd is one such bootstrap star...