Trashed!

July 7, 2016

Trashed!

It’s time to talk trash. That is to say, India’s so-called “trash problem.”

After I returned from my first trip to India in late 2014, a friend asked me what I would change about India if I could change one thing. I thought about it a bit, and then I said, “The trash problem.” Coming from the mostly litter-free U.S., our recycling programs, and curbside waste pickup, I cherished the community and national value of clean public spaces.

Trash is something you notice right away when you begin to go around India. Piles and piles of trash, everywhere, along the city streets and roads, in vacant lots, and in villages, with people, cows, goats, pigs, and, no doubt, rats, going through those piles, looking for something worth eating, re-using, or re-selling. It was disconcerting, to say the least. Shocking.

It’s a picture often painted of India: Those poor people resorting to ragpicking to earn a living. Kind of Dickensian, really, and oh-so-very backward. Your bleeding liberal heart breaks into a thousand little first-world do-gooder pieces.

During my second trip to India, which lasted nearly six months, I had a slightly different reaction to trash. When I arrived in Delhi, the garbage collectors were on strike for not having been paid for three months. (There were garbage collectors? There are landfills? Yes, and yes.) That made the trash problem even more onerous, but the second time around, I was not as shocked.

Part of the time I was there, though, I was traveling with a couple of tour groups, and the topic of trash came up with my fellow travelers who were in India for the first time. Then, I found myself defending India. I’d say: It’s a developing country; it has many, many issues to be dealt with simultaneously. Or: India is a relatively young country; in the U.S., a longer-lived democracy, the “Do Not Litter” campaign began as recently as in my lifetime. Or, I’d say: We just don’t understand; maybe they have different values. At least the trash is not going to waste (re: trashpickers)! Or: You can’t expect India and the U.S. (the West) to have the same values!

Eventually, there was the gradual uncomfortable realization that “India’s trash problem” is a very visible, very troubling sign of not just India’s problem, but a world-wide garbage problem. It was a daily reminder to me that unconscionable amounts of waste are generated every day. While India’s trash lies out on the street, my trash is conveniently picked up every week, and I don’t have to think about where it goes and how my discard practices are adding up.

Much of the world’s trash, though hidden from view in municipal landfills usually outside city limits, is waste from the capitalist consumer culture of the West.

Consider these municipal waste (not industrial waste) statistics:

In 2012, the World Bank predicted the world would generate 2.6 TRILLION pounds of garbage; 44% by OECD (developed countries); 5% by South Asia. A large proportion of the world’s trash is organic waste (1).
Annually, Americans generate 254 million tons of garbage. (2)
A country of 1.2 billion people, India annually generates 147 million tons (133,760 metric tonnes) of garbage. (3)
In 2012, per capita daily household waste in India’s cities ranged from about ½ – 2 pounds of household waste. (4)
U.S. daily per capita household waste is about 4.4 pounds. (5)

Not only does the West generate more trash than India, its wasteful practices are being exported, literally and figuratively. One obvious trash item is snack food packaging, like Lay’s Potato Chips bags, an item, or one like it, you can buy almost anywhere in India. (6) Just on a whim, I did a little research on when PepsiCo/Frito-Lay began exporting snack items like potato chips to India. According to PepsiCo’s website, Lay’s has been an “indispensable part of India’s snacking culture since its launch in 1995.” (7) It now has a 60% market share in India’s potato chip market, (8), with its four layers of polymer-material-based non-biodegradable packaging. (9)

For probably hundreds of years, India has had a vibrant street food culture, where snack food is made while you wait at food stalls, with very little production waste. Now, although street food is still widely available, there is a concerted effort by Western snack food corporations to break into the “emerging market” of India. Not surprisingly, although there are thousands (if not millions) of small and large outdoor traditional fresh food markets in India serving as sites for food sales, the Western grocery store model is making inroads into the culture (I remember being amazed when I discovered a grocery store). EuroMonitor International (an independent provider of strategic market research) reports that 90% of all packaged food in India is sold in grocery stores, and are thus key to growth in packaged food sales. (10) Where in India the snack food industry packages snacks in even smaller packages, due to the average consumer’s lower purchasing power, an even greater threat of packaging waste is created. (11)

Then, there are the other exporters of Western waste habits: McDonald’s, Starbucks, and other Western fast food restaurants now opening in India. (12)

Not only is the West exporting habits of non-biodegradable food packaging waste accumulation, it’s also shipping their traditional waste and e-waste to the shores of India and those of other developing countries, those least able to properly process and dispose of it. (13)

Can we now be quite so judgmental of India’s trash problem?

But wait! Why doesn’t India have “Do Not Litter” campaign (as I remember its name from my childhood) like we do in the U.S.? Why don’t they catch up to Western standards of clean public spaces? I’m so glad you asked that question.

It turns out the our cherished “Keep America Beautiful” campaign has a little trash problem and some culpability on its bloody hands. In the article entitled, “The Origins of Anti-Litter Campaigns,” Bradford Plumer credits Heather Rogers’ book, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (2006), with exposing the origins of our national focus on clean public spaces. In 1953, some state government regulators were about to put the kabash on so much one-use packaging. In response to the danger, two corporations, American Can Company (producer of aluminum cans) and Owens-Illinois Glass Company (producer of glass bottles) teamed up with other corporations to launch the “Keep America Beautiful (KAB)” campaign, which effectively redirected the burden and responsibility for litter from the producers of one-use products to the consumers of one-use products. Then, in the 1970s, this same KAB group lobbied for recycling as a means to fight the U.S. trash problem, once again redirecting the responsibility of trash generation to consumers, rather than producers. (14) It’s your fault, and mine, that we produce 4.4 pounds of waste daily, not the corporations who make it difficult, if not impossible, to do otherwise.

As for India and making the country beautiful: In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a national initiative called, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or “Clean India Mission,” where he exhorted the citizens to clean up trash and clean up India, drawing upon one of Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams for India to inspire the people as a way to celebrate his 150^th birth anniversary in 2019. (15)

Sound familiar? Of course, I am not arguing that trash should not be picked up. But that Western attitude from the corporate-designed Keep America Beautiful campaign, that attitude that says personal responsibility trumps corporate responsibility, has been exported, too. What about the systemic problems of trash generation: More and more products that we just have to have, desires created by ad blitzing; daily, newer model products that make the old models obsolete; one-use products, …and so on. Where does the real problem lie?

In the meantime, the Western media continues to focus its reporting energies on those Indian ragpickers, those truly unfortunate people who must dig through garbage for a living. (16) Or the media focuses on just how difficult it is for India to deal with its trash problem in a tsk-tsk sort-of way, reporting on how Indians themselves are ashamed, with electrifying photos. (17) In fact, it was just that sort of article that I read while in India that spurred this blog post, from the National Geographic. On April 26, 2016, an article ran, entitled, “What It’s Like to Live in the World’s Most Polluted City,” by Melody Rowell. It was a photo essay with photographs by Matthieu Paley, who had gone to Delhi for five days to take photos of Delhi’s pollution problem (18). Aside from an assignment of only five days (an expert, then?), and the usual focus on gasp-inducing photos (they are not like us!!!!!!), the article ended with the Paley’s lament that he could not find a trash can anywhere he went in Delhi.

In other news: The local landfill in my Northwest Ohio county is filling up.

And the City Council of my home town has debated for a couple of months about the problem of unsightly, overflowing trash cans: Where should they be required to be located so as not to offend neighbors and passersby?

Clearly, more trash cans are not going to solve the problem of trash.

Notes:

(1) http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/26-trillion-pounds-of-garbage-where-does-the-worlds-trash-go/258234/

(2) http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/trash-numbers-startling-statistics-about-americans-and-their-garbage.html

(3) http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/3-million-truckloads-daily-indias-real-trash-problem-68539

(4) http://swmindia.blogspot.com/2012/01/municipal-solid-waste-msw-generation-in.html

(5) http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/trash-numbers-startling-statistics-about-americans-and-their-garbage.html

6) Full disclosure: I partook of many packaged snack products in India, especially on the two-month train tour, when the only food available on the trains was likely not produced in sanitary conditions. I’m not proud of this. The subject of food sanitation is a subject for another day.

(7) http://www.pepsicoindia.co.in/brands/lays.html

(8) http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-03-06/news/59844409_1_pepsi-co-india-snacks-sanjiv-puri

(9) https://www.polymersolutions.com/blog/the-science-behind-packaging-the-chip-challenge-flavors/

(10) http://www.euromonitor.com/food-trends-in-india-what-makes-the-indian-market-so-different-/report

(11) http://fmtmagazine.in/fmtnews/its-snack-time-in-india/

(12) http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/a-growing-taste-for-u-s-fast-food-in-india/?_r=0

(13) http://whenonearth.net/20-countries-that-are-used-as-dumping-grounds-for-your-waste/

(14) http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2006/05/origins-anti-litter-campaigns

(15) http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/government_tr_rec/swachh-bharat-abhiyan-2/

(16) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/opinion/scavengers-are-indias-real-recyclers.html

(17) https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/india-launches-an-ambitious-campaign-to-clean-up-dirty-cities-and-villages/2014/10/02/b4b8ca60-bca4-44aa-8dce-36485c4538d7_story.html

(18) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160425-new-delhi-most-polluted-city-matthieu-paley/