Piling up: India tourism’s growing waste management problem

Sus­tain­able tour­ism lead­er Tejas Joseph sum­mar­ises the waste man­age­ment chal­lenges facing India and its travel, tour­ism, and hos­pit­al­ity sec­tors, and recom­mends the first step towards tak­ing respons­ib­il­ity for it.

Travel & tour­ism accoun­ted for 9.2% of India’s GDP in 2018 and facil­it­ated 8.1% of employ­ment. Fur­ther, the travel & tour­ism industry in India is slated to grow by around 6.9% annu­ally, mak­ing it one of those sec­tors cap­able of attract­ing ever lar­ger invest­ments for con­tin­ued development.

Pil­ing up along this path of suc­cess is the grow­ing prob­lem of waste. While exact fig­ures are not avail­able, micro stud­ies and extra­pol­a­tions sug­gest that tour­ism and hotels in India accounts for about 30% of waste from an estim­ated 62 mil­lion tonnes gen­er­ated by the nation annu­ally! This is indeed a dis­pro­por­tion­ately large volume of waste by a single sec­tor. And it shows no signs of decreas­ing when there is neither a stra­tegic engage­ment by the travel & tour­ism industry to deal with it nor an enlightened policy inter­ven­tion by government.

Muni­cip­al sol­id waste man­age­ment is a glob­al prob­lem, but more so in devel­op­ing coun­tries due to a lack of ser­vices and effect­ive man­age­ment pro­ced­ures. Although author­it­ies in these coun­tries claim to alloc­ate 30 – 50% of their civic budgets to waste man­age­ment, it bene­fits less than 50% of their populations. 

Free-floating garbage

In India it is assumed that only around 75% of the sol­id waste gen­er­ated in the coun­try is col­lec­ted by muni­cip­al bod­ies. Of this only around 25% is recovered sys­tem­at­ic­ally for recyc­ling, land­fills, or incin­er­a­tion. This leaves the rest to fly under the radar, lit­ter­ing pub­lic and private land­scapes before get­ting washed into sew­ers, lakes and rivers by rains.

This free-float­ing garbage has been cited as a major cause of flood­ing of many Indi­an cit­ies in recent years. How such uncol­lec­ted and untreated waste impacts pub­lic health remains a mat­ter of con­jec­ture in the absence of any reveal­ing num­bers. How­ever, it can be assumed with a degree of cer­tainty that such waste does indeed affect pub­lic health as much as it does the environment.

Sol­id waste man­age­ment has four crit­ic­al aspects to it apart from its gen­er­a­tion. These include col­lec­tion, sort­ing, stor­age, and disposal/treatment. Even if the first three are addressed, the man­ner in which the last – disposal/treatment – is executed will determ­ine the long term suc­cess or fail­ure of any waste man­age­ment program.

Ragpickers & NGOs

In a coun­try like India where civic ser­vices linked to waste remov­al and treat­ment are slim and poor it falls upon the private sec­tor to fill in the gaps in whatever way pos­sible. The role of the inform­al sec­tor rep­res­en­ted by a loose com­munity of “rag­pick­ers” can­not be over-estim­ated in this regard. It is assumed that close to 4 mil­lion indi­vidu­als – men, women and chil­dren – are involved in trash col­lec­tion around the nation’s cit­ies, account­ing for a size­able volume of waste that gets recovered for recyc­ling or re-use. This inform­al and invis­ible sec­tor is act­ive in big and small Indi­an cit­ies alike, com­ple­ment­ing and some­times even sub­sti­tut­ing for the ser­vices of offi­cial bodies.

Addi­tion­ally, a great num­ber of private bod­ies — not­ably NGOs — have ded­ic­ated their resources, man­power and com­mit­ment to man­aging waste in innov­at­ive ways. While these exer­cises are worthy of note — for their pas­sion and ded­ic­a­tion to the cause of pub­lic health and the envir­on­ment — they do not make a ser­i­ous dif­fer­ence to the prob­lem of waste countrywide. 

It has come as a late real­isa­tion to many that the efforts of rag­pick­ers and NGOs, com­mend­able as they are, can­not fill in the blanks on their own without adequate sup­port from government. 

Since pub­lic infra­struc­ture is cre­ated by gov­ern­ment, it is they who are in the best pos­i­tion to stew­ard it. A fail­ure at this end is what lies at the bot­tom of the large waste prob­lems that haunt many devel­op­ing coun­tries, affect­ing the qual­ity of life of their people and the aes­thet­ics of their phys­ic­al environments.

Back to basics for travel & tourism

Waste man­age­ment in Indi­a’s travel & tour­ism sec­tor is largely a self-ini­ti­ated affair. There are no stip­u­lated guidelines nor offi­cial man­dates that set object­ives or incent­ives for any industry. Those in the industry who are inclined to take respons­ib­il­ity for their own waste come from oth­er sec­tors, such as agri­cul­ture, that already appre­ci­ate the value of respons­ible waste man­age­ment, or are led by enlightened admin­is­tra­tions con­cerned about their footprints. 

Evolve Back Resorts, loc­ated in the state of Karnataka in south­ern India is a fam­ily con­cern whose vis­ion was forged in the plant­a­tion sec­tor going back half a cen­tury at the time of India’s inde­pend­ence. It was through agri­cul­ture that they learned the fine art of bal­an­cing eco­lo­gic­al imper­at­ives with com­mer­cial suc­cess. They brought this insight into the hos­pit­al­ity sec­tor, which they entered in the 1990s.

As a high-end group of lux­ury resorts, Evolve Back under­stands that waste can­not be wished away. It was a mat­ter of con­cern from the start, which pro­voked a con­tin­ued search for meth­ods and systems. 

Measurement first

The first break­through was the real­isa­tion that meas­ure­ment ought to be the first step. Then, over the years, begin­ning in 2010, the brand for­mu­lated a stand­ard oper­at­ing pro­ced­ure (SOP) for waste — one of the first of its kind in the Indi­an tour­ism industry — with ded­ic­ated guidelines for its iden­ti­fic­a­tion, sort­ing, quan­ti­fic­a­tion, stor­age and handling. 

A com­mit­ment to rig­or­ous eval­u­ation has res­ul­ted in a data­base that reveals the detailed waste foot­print of the com­pany across all its resorts. This waste map helps the com­pany keep waste firmly in its sights. It helps Evolve Back devel­op policies that focus on reduc­tion and mit­ig­a­tion. The “bot­tom line” — quan­ti­fic­a­tion, num­bers — has forced a change in perspective!

Rejected waste

In the absence of author­ised gov­ern­ment bod­ies who can be depended upon to remove waste from its prop­er­ties, the resort chain works closely with loc­al waste vendors in the inform­al sec­tor. These are mostly low-skilled, uneducated loc­als who sup­ple­ment their income through trash col­lec­tion and sales to large waste aggreg­at­ors, who in turn sup­ply recyc­ling industries.

Unfor­tu­nately the recyc­ling-upcyc­ling indus­tries in India are under­developed and not all waste can be giv­en a new lease of life. It is assumed that only around 40 – 50% of typ­ic­al hotel waste reaches the recyc­ling sec­tor for repur­pos­ing of any kind. The rest is land­filled, incin­er­ated, or dumped stealth­ily in vari­ous pub­lic spaces. It is this “rejec­ted waste” that is most prob­lem­at­ic, adding to envir­on­ment­al and pub­lic health bur­dens over the course of time.

E‑waste

In recent years “e‑waste” — dis­carded elec­tric­al and elec­tron­ic devices — has become a prob­lem unto itself with very few author­ised hand­lers for its col­lec­tion and safe dis­pos­al. Every­body now is so focused on the prob­lem of plastic trash that few see the mount­ing men­ace of e‑waste in India with its mil­lions of con­sumers of dis­pos­able devices of vari­ous kinds.

For hotels in India, e‑waste com­prises mostly of spent light­ing – floures­cent, cfl, and tung­sten bulbs – vehicle bat­ter­ies, and com­puter peri­pher­als. These are either kept in stor­age indef­in­itely — tak­ing up valu­able space — or giv­en to loc­al vendors who have no expert­ise in deal­ing with such types of waste. The few author­ised hand­lers of e‑waste are loc­ated in the big cit­ies mak­ing it expens­ive to trans­port waste from remote des­tin­a­tions where many lux­ury resorts and hotels are located.

Drops in the ocean

Unlike in the past, when the growth of travel & tour­ism was linked mostly to infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing, the sec­tor’s future may now have to depend on respons­ible stew­ard­ship. Today there are more hotels and resorts tak­ing their waste ser­i­ously and attempt­ing to con­trol and account for it. How­ever, these remain scattered and isol­ated efforts. Without com­ple­ment­ary par­ti­cip­a­tion from gov­ern­ment these exer­cises will be akin to drops in the pro­ver­bi­al ocean. 

The industry is poised to be impacted and con­strained by new and unfore­seen devel­op­ments attrib­ut­able to cli­mate change and deteri­or­at­ing des­tin­a­tions. Cli­mate change can­not be battled by the sec­tor alone, of course. It requires con­cer­ted action at all levels. Des­tin­a­tions, how­ever, are closely con­nec­ted to the mount­ing prob­lem of waste, which is an imme­di­ate threat of no small magnitude. 

The travel & tour­ism industry’s con­tri­bu­tion to look­ing after des­tin­a­tions will have to at least equal its eco­nom­ic stake in them — and dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact on them — if a new, more pos­it­ive chapter is to be written.

Fea­tured image: Com­bines rights-free images by Roney John (Taj Mahal) via Pexels and Mrs­Brown (the waste) via Pixabay.

About the author

Tejas Joseph over­sees respons­ible tour­ism at Evolve Back Resorts, a small lux­ury resort chain in the south­ern state of Karnataka, India. He is also an occa­sion­al writer for tour­ism news­let­ters and blogs in which he explores sus­tain­ab­il­ity in tour­ism. A res­id­ent of Auroville — an inter­na­tion­al com­munity near Pon­di­ch­erry com­mit­ted to sus­tain­able liv­ing prac­tices — Tejas has recently taken to hydro­ponics on his rooftop “both as an enga­ging exper­i­ment and a new-found hobby”.