Rag pickers in clean-up war

Rag pickers may soon become integral to reducing plastic waste in the city.

The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) is exploring the possibility of using their services in collecting and recycling plastic waste.

“Rag pickers work in an unorganised manner. If we can give them some aid, a place to store the recyclable material and device a machanism to handle them they can help us reduce the impact of plastic,” said M S Goudar, member secretary, KSPCB. “This is the only inexpensive and practical means to collect the plastic that is being dumped indiscriminately.” Scrap dealers pay rag pickers Rs 6 for a kilogram of plastic.

The Central Pollution Control Board is getting a legislation enacted to make it compulsory for all manufacturors to produce plastics bags that have a minimum thickness of 40 microns.

This can be recycled and will also raise the earnings of rag pickers.

The only way to mitigate the impact of plastic on environment is to minimise its use and find safer methods to recycle it.

The KSPCB is also looking for safer ways to recycle plastic or burn them.

Some of the methods that are used to recycle plastic are not safe and contribute to pollution as highly toxic gases like dioxin and ferous are released into the atmosphere when it is heated for recycling.

Burning plastic in cement kilns at a very high temprature is considered to be one of the safest methods of destroying plastic as even gases that are released also get burnt at that temprature.

“In Pune an enterpruner has come up with a technology to produce fuel by breaking plastic. But that is not economically viable,” said Gouder. “We can adopt the technology if is made economically feasible.”