Indian waste pickers turn climate change challenges into opportunities

PARIS — Climate change can pose a major challenge for the urban poor, but it can also create jobs and improve their lives.

This spirit was showcased yesterday (Dec 8) by several 2015 United Nations Momentum for Change Award Urban Poor category winners, during an event held at the sidelines of the ongoing Paris climate talks to negotiate a universal climate pact.

Among the projects presented was an electronic waste initiative in India to train waste pickers to safely collect electronic waste and dispose of them.

The project, which was implemented by Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group (a nongovernment organisation) in India, has seen more than 2,000 waste pickers being trained to collect and segregate waste.

Special attention is paid to electronic waste, which has high recycling value. As a result, the incomes of these waste pickers have increased by 10 to 30 per cent.

”95 per cent of the electronic waste in India is collected as household waste. Formal recyclers do not take in electronic waste unless it is more than three tonnes,” pointed out Ms Chitra Mukherjee, who is Chintan’s Head of Programmes.

“We train them (waste pickers), aggregate the waste, store it and when it is over three tonnes, we sell it to recyclers.”

India is the world’s fifth largest producer of electronic waste, discarding almost 1.7 million tonnes of electronic waste in 2014. Methane emissions generated by electronic waste in landfills are 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere.

“We create this formal chain... Over the past four years, we have diverted 25 tonnes of electronic waste for recycling instead of going straight into the landfills,” Ms Mukherjee said.

She said that Chintan’s long term goal is to encourage more recycling. “We want to get the informal sector to come into the repair and recycle sector. So that people don’t buy more and more products.”

Speaking to TODAY on the significance of the award, Ms Mukherjee said that “it is fantastic that the work we are doing is coming into focus. In India, everyone understands waste is an issue. But electronic waste is such a big issue and in India, it is something we are newly learning about.”

Momentum for Change is an initiative spearheaded by the UN Climate Change secretariat to shine a light on the enormous groundswell of activities underway across the globe that are moving the world toward a highly resilient and low-carbon future.

Among the other projects showcased were a water treatment cum solar water heating system for Kenyan urban slums and planning tools to put Latin American cities on a low carbon developmental pathway.

The event showcasing innovative projects for the urban poor was held in conjunction with a COP21 (21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) - UN roundtable discussion on urban poor communities and climate change.

Participants in the roundtable spoke on how growing rural-urban migration, especially in the developing world, is likely to compound the challenges facing poor urban communities in future.

“By 2050, half of the world’s population will be living in cities... We must have programmes that seek to respond to urbanisation and migration to provide general infrastructure and at the same time combining that with sustainability and responding to the impacts of climate change,” said Durban Mayor James Nxumalo during the roundtable.