Changing the Game in Indian Solid Waste Management – Lessons Learned

Parag Gupta
Founder, Waste Ventures

1) Ensure the appropriate political support to minimize lead time and mitigate risk

At the end of the day, like many basic services, waste falls under government purview and the municipality must provide the concession to collect waste.  Prior, Waste Ventures primarily focused on finding the local partner but this would yield little result unless there was a government connection.  We also learned that the political hierarchy is strictly observed and therefore, it was better to go top down rather than bottom up as ultimate approval would come from the Member of Parliament or Member of Legislative Assembly rather than the Chief Officer.  As such, Waste Ventures has made great strides to involve public officials at the state level both in elected and administrative office that has paved the way in multiple states in India.  The added benefit in implementation has been the higher-level elected and administrative officials protect against lower-level bureaucrats from obstructing the project.

2) Structure investment towards processing waste rather than collecting it

Most contractors are interested in the collection aspect of a municipal waste contract.  Given payment of approximately $20 per ton of waste collected, this adds up to a large sum that is also often associated with the under belly of waste management.  At Waste Ventures, we much prefer the processing side – it has the potential to create a higher margin and relies on market forces rather than government payment as we create compost or biomass briquettes from the organic waste that we sell to local farmers and recycle the inorganic waste which again connects to larger recycling units.  However, it is important that our local partners also conduct the collection aspect of waste management as this offers quality control on the waste inputs for the processing.  However, we minimize collection expenses to the municipality in a transparent manner and in exchange, ask that the municipality provide as much equipment as possible in the collection of waste.  (Municipalities are more likely to have a budget to provide capital equipment rather than an operating budget).  For example in Osmanabad, the municipality has provided three-wheelers to assist in the collection.    

This allows us to focus investment into the processing of waste which is more palatable to investors as it is higher margin and least susceptible to political risk.

3) Create strong baselines for measurement for municipalities, funders, and the CER process

One of the first things we have done once we have gotten on the ground is to conduct a baseline survey of the area as it stands now.  This provides us critical data as to the status quo so we can effectively measure the change in cleanliness we have brought about to the municipality who will want demonstrable change as quickly as possible (particularly to counter those with their own vested interests in seeing the project fail).  Secondly, gathering information on the current status of waste pickers including salary and activity level allows us to effectively measure the social and environmental impact we are having so we can ensure we are effectively creating livelihoods and increasing amounts being recycled and composted.  Finally, to validate our project for carbon credits, we are setting up UNFCCC-approved measures so we may track the waste being processed – particularly organic waste composted and the amount of methane we will avert so the cooperative may claim carbon credits.  The process both certifies emissions reduced and provides additional revenue from the CER process. 

We are just starting this process but already, we see the application of the above learnings bearing fruit in the other 34 municipalities we are considering.