India spurring low-carbon innovation on a large scale

The low-carbon transition could, and in some cases is already, driving a boom in innovation and emerging businesses, and a parallel shift in skills and the labour force. Innovations for low-carbon transition is about moving from waste management to resource efficiency, sustainable business models, and the right support frameworks for innovations to be widely adopted. This includes addressing potential skill gaps through training and labour market policies.

At a global scale, the waste management sector contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, estimated at approximately three to five per cent of total anthropogenic emissions in 2005. Although minor levels of emissions are released through waste treatment and disposal, the prevention and recovery of wastes (i.e., as secondary materials or energy) avoids emissions in all other sectors of the economy. A holistic approach to waste management has positive consequences for GHG emissions from the energy, forestry, agriculture, mining, transport, and manufacturing sectors.
Every waste management practice generates GHG, both directly (emissions from the process itself) and indirectly (through energy consumption). However, the overall climate impact or of the waste management system will depend on net GHGs, accounting for both emissions and indirect, downstream GHG savings. A range of activities focussed on waste and climate change are currently being led by manufacturing units, both small and big.
However, there is paucity of a cohesive approach, which has resulted in gaps, duplication, and regional disparity in programmes offered. A central mechanism is needed to collaborate with existing organisations to ensure accessibility to and dissemination of relevant information across the globe, effective use of resources to achieve climate benefit through integrated waste management, promotion of best practices, and rapid transfer of simple, effective, proven technologies and knowledge to developing countries. Several companies are extracting resource efficiency from their waste and, in the process, saving the environment from devastation.

Recycling PET bottles

Rupinder Singh Arora, Chairman of Arora Fibres Ltd, has been recycling discarded plastic bottles into polyester staple fibre since 1994 after he saw the colossal damage to the environment from mountains of bio-degradable plastic being burnt in the country. “Apart from a commercial interest, converting PET (polyethylene terephthalate) into polyester has a huge positive impact on the environment,” says Arora.
Arora brought the technology to India after tying up with Korean company Mijung, which is specialised in converting PET bottles into polyester yarn. His factory in the industrial belt of Silvassa in Dadra & Nagar Haveli has the capacity to process 18,000 tonnes of plastic a year and he plans to increase that to 48,000 tonnes by next year. Arora says the environmental benefit of recycling discarded plastic bottles is enormous. “By recycling 10 billion PET bottles, one can save one million square yards of landfill space and eliminate 0.25 million tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere,” said Arora while speaking to Business Today.

Waste water treatment

Similarly, Wabag is helping companies clean up their act by reusing waste water. It is sometimes said that water, and not oil, is the real liquid gold today. Water technology company VA Tech Wabag would certainly agree. The Chennai-based company recycles industrial and municipal waste water either for reuse as drinking water or to plough back for industrial use. Last year, the company recorded revenues of `1000 crore in India. Six years ago, it stepped in to help Indian Oil Corp’s Panipat refinery when a farmers’s lobby in Haryana raised a hue and cry over the company’s waste water discharge. The water treatment company recycled the entire plant’s waste water discharge and made it as pure as drinking water. It will build an effluent treatment plant with recycling facilities for Reliance Industries’ purified terephthalic acid plant in Dahej and a tertiary treatment plant for the Reliance petrochemicals complex in Hazira.

Waste to fuel

Waste management company Hanjer Biotech Energies realised that they can recycle garbage from landfills to produce energy and kickstarted India’s first green power plant in Jalgaon in Maharashtra this year. The biomass power plant had been closed because of the unavailability of husk rice, the raw material for fuelling the plant, which pushed Hanjer to turn to refuse derived fuel (RDF) from municipal solid waste to generate seven megawatts (MW) of green power. The concept of converting waste to energy is not new, but Mumbai-based Hanjer plans to take it to a new level following the success of its experiment in Jalgaon. It plans to take over four to five closed biomass power plants in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to generate around 40 MW of green power and then set up a green power plant in Surat, Gujarat, that runs completely on fuel derived from solid waste. Usually, 20 to 30 per cent of supporting fuel such as coal or oil is used along with RDF to generate power. The plant in Surat will use green fuel derived from waste from three of the company’s solid waste processing facilities in the state to generate 15 MW of power. The plant has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will earn carbon credits for Hanjer. “Of the total 9100 tonnes of waste which we process, around 18 to 20 per cent is green RDF. With the amount of green RDF produced after recycling the waste, we can run six 15 MW power plants,” says Irfan Furniturewala, Founder and Chairman of Hanjer.
Besides these establishments, the informal sector plays an important role in the management of plastics. The recycling rate of plastics in India is expected to be around 60 per cent, even though 94 per cent of plastics that we use are of thermoset category and can be recycled. It is important that urban local bodies (ULBs) integrate these informal sector workers, increase their capacities through training and workshops, and provide more material recovery facilities in cities. Further, the collection and recycling of waste in India is mostly governed by energy and economic linkages, thus leading to non-collection of low-value plastics like low density-polyethylene bags or even multilayer plastic packagings. Thus, collection of such low-value items will have to be supported through financial models which are sustainable (like the Extended Producer Responsibility or deposit refund schemes) to make their collection and recycling feasible.
This will not only help cities manage waste efficiently but will also uplift their social and economic fabric. ULBs should also link these informal sector workers through government schemes for health insurance and life policies to provide a sense of safety and security. They should link these informal workers into formal chains through waste management concessionaires, self-help groups or non-government organisations (NGOs), and assure that these workers of last resort are uplifted and moved to formal work.
Despite ambitious targets, policies and instruments that would enable a transition from conventional waste management to an integrated and comprehensive resource management are still missing. Moreover, this will require innovative policy mixes which do not only address different end-of-pipe approaches but integrate various resource efficiency aspects from product design to patterns of production and consumption. The development of a policy mix for a resource efficient economy requires systematic identification of resource relevant policy fields as a first step.
A lack of proper treatment infrastructure and sufficient capacities for the municipal waste that is generated is a crucial barrier to environmentally sound waste management. Strong policy signals are needed to create long-term predictability for investment and change so that materials, such as plastics, glass, metals, paper, wood, rubber and other recyclables, re-enter the economy as secondary raw materials at competitive prices.