Tale Of An Untapped $13 Bn Waste Management Industry

NEW DELHI: Between an India which produces 62 million tonnes of solid waste every year and a 'Swachh Bharat' is an untapped waste management industry which has the potential to be worth $13 billion by 2025, according to business organisations dealing in waste management research.

Entrepreneurs are now urgng the government to franchise the 'fragmented' waste management industry and give it industrial status, so as to explore the sector in an organised manner.

"Indian waste has big business potential; it's all set to become a $13 billion industry by 2025," Ritu Marya of Franchise India, a franchise solution company, told IANS.

"Swachh Bharat is a great initiative, but there are not enough businesses to back it up. At present, businesses are fragmented. They are either startups or SMEs, very few corporates and largely coming from overseas. That is not exactly an industry.

"A sector becomes an industry when professionalism and big funding comes, partnership happens at very large levels. That's what we are trying to do, to put all these fragments together and make it one large industry," Marya said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi "means business, but I think Modi has put a lot on his platter, and business needs execution. Social enterprises are great but unless they make profit, they can't sustain for a very long time".

Franchise India along with SingEx, a Singaporean investment company exploring business opportunities with Indian waste, held a 'Clean & Green India' conclave here, where businesses chalked out the importance of an 'army of waste managers' to achieve success in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

Indian waste management is governed by various legislation rolled out by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change in association with state pollution control boards, state governments and municipalities.

Official figures say around 62 million tonnes of solid waste is produced in the country every year -- of which only 43 million tonnes is collected, only 12 million tonnes treated and the rest dumped.

This figure is expected to rise to 436 million tonnes by 2050.

Around 4.5 million tonnes is hazardous waste that includes bio-medical waste. Three million tonnes in plastic and 3.2 million tonnes of e-waste is generated annually in India.

As per another survey by business research organisation NOVONOUS, the waste management market is expected to be worth $13.62 billion by 2025, with an annual growth rate of 7.17 percent.

The e-waste management market, which is regularised compared to other solid waste, is expected to grow at 10.03 percent and the bio-medical waste management market is expected to grow at 8.41 percent during the same period.

As per the Ministry of Labour and Employment, the e-waste market is expected to grow at 30.6 percent during 2014-19.

"Given the size of India and the amount of garbage that we have, it could be even a $100 billion industry by 2020, provided we build the business around Swachh Bharat. Right now, it's just built on rhetoric. I have not seen any government official coming out and giving a business vision to Swachh Bharat," said a waste manager.

B.K. Soni of Eco Recycling Ltd. (Ecoreco), India's first professional e-waste management company, says 50 percent of expensive e-waste goes out of India every year to extract gold, silver, platinum and other expensive materials out of it.

"It is sold back to India at 50 percent higher rates," he says.

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