TRADE AND RECYCLING OF INORGANIC SOLID WASTE IN HYDERABAD 151
pickers searching for waste in their respective locations. This is reflected in the
expenditure on health that almost everyone in these groups makes weekly to coun-
teract the negative effects of their occupational hazards. They do not use protective
equipment, their only tool being a long stick to rummage through waste piles.
Environmental impact – reduction of waste volumes
In the previous section, the reduction of waste volumes realized in the trade and recy-
cling sector was calculated at 10 percent of the waste collected by the MCH weekly.
This is a substantial contribution to more sustainable SWM. This applies especially in
the context in which existing dumpsites are becoming full, and new dumpsites are yet
to be taken into use. In fact, this would argue for introducing further and more strin-
gent recycling measures, so that existing dumpsites can remain in use for a longer
period of time.
However, the opposite trend is likely to occur. The privatization of SWC is reducing
the access of waste pickers and itinerant buyers to waste at the neighbourhood level
(see chapter 3), and the question remains whether the secondary collection points are
able to offer a substitution at the same level of recovery.
7.8.SYSTEM WIDE CONCERNS
A major worry is that neither authorities nor residents in Hyderabad recognise the
recycling sector as an integral part of a SWM system in which concerns over environ-
mental health and environmental impacts are integrated. Rather, the public health
perspective is still the leading concern in efforts to improve the system, a concern
which remains predominant in the new national Rules for SWM laid down in 2001.
The implications are that matters will get worse before they can get better in terms of
contributions to environmental aspects of sustainable development in SWM, as access
to waste is closed off more effectively and the amount of waste recovered is reduced.
The alternative utilized in European countries is to shift the burden of recovery from
private sector initiative to households, who are required to provide their labour for
free. They are required to sort waste materials and to offer them in specific containers
to the public authorities, or to take sorted materials to secondary collection points.
This is an option which would be highly resisted in India for several reasons.
Currently, households sort materials that are saleable to itinerant buyers or other
traders Providing free labour would be anathema to middle-class and high-income
households because of the ‘unclean’ association of waste, and would therefore be left
to servants, who would have little interest in performing such tasks well if there was
no extra income to be derived from waste.
Alternatives suggested by engineers from ERM in Chennai to allow waste pickers
legal access to secondary collection stations, and organize waste unloading in such a