‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’ are mantras that we hear often whenever the garbage problem is discussed: but all three require commitment, a certain level of awareness, and concern for the environment. None of these seems immediately evident in the average person we meet on the streets.

Normally, we assume that all the re-saleable garbage that we throw away will be picked up by rag-pickers for recycling. This is not always true. The ragpicker picks up what he thinks has value or can be sold, not what we want him to pick up.

The much touted ‘source segregation’ method to separate the bio-degradable from the non-bio-degradable garbage (usually packaging) continues to see patchy success for various reasons.

Coercive methods of penalties and fines are also not easily implementable in a democratic polity. The result is many of our cities are often eyesores with garbage strewn around and our waterways heavily polluted with floating junk, causing enormous problems for citizens and animals alike.

One way to prevent people throwing away things — and get them to ‘source-segregate’ — is to ensure that the discards have a value attached to them that is assuredly ‘redeemable’ in the immediate future.

Money for junk

Have you ever found a discarded ten paise coin or a one rupee note lying on the road? Never or maybe once or twice in your lifetime? Well, the truth is that one rarely comes across people discarding even a ten paise coin as ‘useless’. However, we do find people throwing away much more valuable stuff — in terms of the price they may fetch — labelling them junk; mostly packaging, items half-used or old.

Why is it that a person who thinks twice throwing away even a ten paise coin has no qualms when it comes to discarding ‘junk’ that may be worth much more?

This paradox is easily explained. The ‘junk’ comes without an immediately assignable value attached and is not exchangeable the way a coin can be. We will not discard anything which has a ‘monetary’ value attached to it, however small.

But if we do not know the value of something we will simply throw it away without a second thought. For example, like coins we rarely throw old newspapers into the garbage bin; we would rather sell them to the ‘raddiwalla’ because we know that they will fetch some returns, however modest.

But used cans, polythene bags, packaging? Well, we are not so sure and so they add to the hundreds of tonnes of garbage that our cities generate. So how do we make everyone feel that garbage has value? Can we do this by assigning a monetary value that the consumer could encash? Some institutions, cities and countries across the globe have tried this quite successfully.

I found a similar system being implemented effectively at the Mysore zoo. Anyone who wants to take in a bottle of water into the zoo has to pay 10 at the entrance. At the exit the money is returned if the empty bottle is turned in. If you throw away the bottle you lose ₹10. The attendant disbursing the amount at the exit told me, with a grin, that he rarely came across a case where a person threw away the bottle not caring for the amount that he would get back on surrendering it.

In any other zoo in India, there are discarded bottles and plastic bags all over the place; no amount of threats, notices, education, requests or cajoling seem to work.

Assigning a ‘monetary value’ to garbage, however, cannot be arbitrary: it has to have a method. Some municipal bodies have tried to ‘purchase’ recyclable junk but this needs funds and then there are the logistics involved.

Both these problems can be solved by taking recourse to the principle of ‘polluter pays’ — in this case both the producer and consumer of the good are the polluters and so both should pay or be held responsible for its disposal.

The recycling model

As we enter the age of e-commerce, every single delivery will entail expensive packaging that is virtually useless to the buyer. Packaging comprises a large volume of garbage. Suppose we were to assign a value to packages in general (say 0.1 per cent of the value of the good itself) with a minimum at 10 paise (for, say, shampoo sachets ) imagine what a lot of care people would take to keep the packages safe! The producer of the good would have to cough up this money that would be mandatorily payable to anyone who returns the packaging.

If every single packaging material or container — cardboard boxes, plastic packages and bags, sachets, had a value printed on it with the message: ‘the manufacturer will pay ₹.. on production of the empty package at least 80 per cent intact… (or something similar) we will end up capturing most garbage at source’. For non-branded goods and packaging a separate dispensation will be needed. We would require the value of the packaging to be included in the price and mentioned specifically. Since the consumer would have already paid this amount upfront the producer should have no problem giving him this money.

We may require a regulatory framework and institutional arrangements for this to work but these can always be put in place. As a country we could perhaps start experimenting with such alternatives at least in the major cities before our garbage woes assume monstrous proportions.

The writer is with the IAS. The views are personal

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