Picking up plastic waste, rather than reducing it

FMCG companies like HUL, Dabur woo ragpickers to clean up sachets & lighter plastic packaging - The Economic Times: ""Involving ragpickers, we have thrashed out an arrangement for door-to-door collection of waste," says Dabur India's senior ED Jude Magima. "The programme was initially rolled out at the stockist and warehouse level, where ragpickers would collect all the damaged packs from these stockists and warehouses, sort and segregate them and sell them to paper mills.

" Over one lakh ragpickers, who earn Rs 75-100 a day, help partially clear Mumbai of the 8,000 tonnes of waste of all kinds generated daily, says IIP's Saha. The municipal corporation, by itself, will be unable to manage such large volumes of junk.

"In smaller towns and pilgrimage places, it's very difficult to manage our waste management initiative," says Ramesh Chauhan, chairman of Bisleri International. Two years ago, Bisleri put in place an elaborate recycling chain that linked ragpickers with companies that could buy and recycle the scrap they collected.

An expert committee set up by the ministry of environment and forests almost two years ago had suggested that consumer product makers using plastic packaging should partner local municipality bodies to ensure recycling of waste."

'via Blog this'