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KERALA RESEARCH PROGRAMME ON LOCAL LEVEL DEVELOPMENT CENTRE FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ZERO WASTE KOVALAM AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES SRIDHAR R & SHIBU K NAIR THANAL CONSERVATION ACTION AND INFORMATION NETWORK AUGUST 2004 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT …………3 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY…………4 ZERO WASTE……….10 ZERO WASTE KOVALAM……….17 STATUS OF EMPLOYMENT IN KOVALAM……….26 CREATING EMPLOYMENT FROM WASTE-A ZW APPROACH……….42 CONCLUSION……….68 ANNEXURES……….73 BIBLIOGRAPHY………94 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT At the onset we wish to thank Dr. K Narayanan Nair, Programme Coordinator of the Kerala Research Programme on Local Level Development for his unstinted support and a rare faith that he has shown on activist researchers like us. Many a time we have not been able to give our work the thrust that he would have wished us to give. Nevertheless, at the fag end of such a remarkable effort in research history in Kerala, which was the KRPLLD programme, we wish to record that for us it has been more than worth the efforts. And then we wish to thank Dr. P R Gopinathan Nair, Dr. Sreekumar Chathopadya, Dr. Mridul Eapen and Dr. Vineetha Menon whose presence and support have helped us stream our thoughts, sometimes inadvertently. And we wish to thank those people who have been behind our back, supporting us, pushing us, asking questions, enquiring and finally making sure that this work is done satisfactorily albeit the delay - Dr. Christopher and Dr. T P Sreedharan. We also wish to thank all the staff at the KRPLLD Secretariat and the members of the Study Circle for their valuable advises during the interactions we have had, and which has helped us in streaming our work. We wish to thank all our friends and staff at Thanal and the Zero Waste Centre. Special mention is needed of Sujatha,. Nishanth,. Santhan, Raju and Sujith who at various stages helped us in our study by assisting in survey teams or documentation support. Finally, we wish to relive the various moments that we spend with all the people in Kovalam who have joined the process of Zero Waste and thank them all for giving the Zero Waste Kovalam programme the quality that it has and sharing with us their experience of the programme. The women of the Pioneer Paper Bag Unit and the Keerthi SHG need to be specially acknowledged. Sridhar R Shibu K Nair 3 ZERO WASTE KOVALAM AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY The Zero Waste Kovalam Project is an on-going program of Thanal, a voluntary public interest research, action and advocacy group based in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. This project is a multi stakeholder program jointly supported by the Department of Tourism, Kerala, KHRA (Kerala Hotels and Restaurants Association) - Kovalam Unit, Greenpeace, GAIA (Global Alliance for Incineration Alternatives), and the Grama Panchayaths of Venganoor and Vizhinjam. The Zero Waste Kovalam Project aims to tackle the waste issue in the fishing village and beach destination of Kovalam through the invigorating process of Zero Waste that is changing the way communities use materials and resources. Zero Waste is an ethical, economical, and efficient way of looking at material use and in the process eliminating the production of waste and the need for waste management. An important component of the Zero Waste programme is to explore sustainable employment options as a way of developing a sustainable society and use resources and skills to develop sustainable employment for the local community. This also means a paradigm shift from the top-down, grant based, employment generation (and / or poverty alleviation programmes) and the linear waste management methods that Governments are implementing that is leading to more and more resource depletion and more and more families to compete in this rather unjust system. In Zero Waste Kovalam, discards management methods specifically aim at complete resource recovery, eliminating the use of materials that cannot be safely recovered and promote materials that are locally available, producable and recoverable. Materials Substitution is one of the components that aim at local families producing these materials that can substitute toxics use like plastics and chemical contaminated food and water and thus aim for not only a healthy resource use but develop local employment and local economic growth. This research project aims at studying the employment generating activities in the area, vis-a-vis the condition that was prevailing in the area and to document the process, change and results. It aims to determine and develop the Local-level employment opportunities opened up by the implementation of the Zero Waste Kovalam programme in Venganoor and Vizhinjam Panchayaths. An analysis of the process is also attempted. A look at some of the major issues that pose challenges for implementing the Zero waste concept especially with respect to employment generation, resource use (especially the life- supporting systems like land, water) and materials substitution is attempted. 1.1 BACKGROUND TO TAKING UP SUCH A STUDY Waste has always been seen as the dirty and dark side of society and the garbage bin in every home or institution has always occupied the most unwanted and sometimes uncared off corner. The rather negative priority that we have given to garbage in our lives have finally led us to take it as a more than serious pre-occupation thanks to issues that have plagued waste generation and management in our homes, towns and cities in our State. Waste in the State of Kerala is not an old story. It is only since the last two decades or so that we have faced the stinky problem of waste in the dimensions that we currently experience. What exactly are these dimensions and why have we come down to this state of affairs after being flaunted around in the development circles across the globe as one of the most progressive, hygienic, health-prioritized state – one of this kind in the country and comparable only to a very few European nations? Before asking questions let us turn around a bit and look at our traditions. There was very little place for the word “waste”. “Waste” was something that came last, when nothing else could be done, something, which we finally discarded. Those were times when there were too little resources, in whatever form, and one could not discard anything. So, whatever was produced, was used to the 4 maximum, and hence there was no place for “waste” in the society. Disposal of discards, mostly organic was done in pits and crude form of latrines and nature did the rest of the job. Waste in the towns and cities in Kerala before 1960’s comprised mostly of organic matter and almost the whole quantity of waste seems to have been recycled back into nature by composting or direct use as manure. In Thiruvananthapuram, farmers used to pay the municipality workers to get them the best quality market waste, directly, and tons of waste used to leave the city into farms and fields, and even to Tamilnadu, as manure, without even being composted in the dumping yards. This was the experience almost all over the State. But later on, the content of the waste gradually underwent a change. Inorganic material, mostly in the form of plastics – mainly the consumables and disposable items - entered the waste stream. And as less and less of waste was recycled or composted, the composting yards gradually became just dumping yards. This experience is very similar in all the municipalities and corporations. In Kerala, panchayaths, which till then had no problem of managing the discarded matter, also started facing the same issue as in municipalities and corporations. During these two decades, Kerala also saw development of its infrastructure, which meant that with money pouring in from the Gulf and investments increasing in the construction sector, in housing and in tourism, building up the landscape became a major preoccupation. It changed the landscape drastically, filled up paddy lands, pulled down hills, closed the seacoast and stone-walled the river sides, mined the rivers and it left a lot of debris behind which tainted the surroundings. Consumerist tendencies appeared, and people moved more into lifestyles that were at par with the west. Packaging of items, sudden spurt in throw away (disposable plastic) packing and covers came to stay. People also forgot past cultural practices and started mindlessly throwing away the waste into any street corners, roadsides, drains, wetlands, fields and even wells. And these dumping grounds became unsightly and unhygienic places, breeding sites for disease causing germs and vermin. Ground water contamination became a major issue in all the communities surrounding these dumping yards, wetlands and wells. Any management systems that was in place was totally ill-equipped to handle this change. Waste removal almost fully failed and most of the Local Governments handled the situation by just collecting the waste and dumping in some other place, till there were objections from there – some sort of shifting operation. Open burning of waste, littered streets, roadsides with heaps of rotting and stinking waste, over laden waste bins, stray dogs pulling and fighting over these heaps became very common sights. During these times Local Self Government Bodies (LSGB’s- Panchayaths, Municipalities and Corporations ) were also attempting whatever waste management they could apart from the unhygienic land filling and dumping practices. Incinerators were proposed in many Panchayaths and Municipalities in the late 1990’s. At many of these places companies that sell incinerators went on a marketing spree and enquiries started pouring in at the Panchayath, Local Administration and Pollution Control offices. Many Panchayaths started installation of Incinerators. It was almost at the same time that in the global scene, countries across the world had come together to negotiate a treaty for eliminating the production of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), consisting of chemicals that were persistent in the environment, meaning that they will not biodegrade easily, and may bio-accumulate and even bio-magnify as we move up the food chain.

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