Business of waste in India

As the penchant for low cost services has grown, some country’s habit of getting things done at low cost has also risen. Now its not just local people who are after raddiwala/bhangarwala it is municipal corporations in UK which are interested in washing off their dirt in India. It costs upto £148 to recycle a ton of rubbish but in India its costs only £40 almost a third. So, now British subcontractors are dumping waste in cost effective India as part of green and clean UK. The news has infuriated the country, which finds it difficult to get rid of its own waste, but not the businessmen.

India, like most of the developing country, has always been good dumping ground of waste, especially industrial waste. India for long has been hub of ship breaking industry. Most of this industry is located in Gujarat followed by some work in Mumbai and kolkatta; and together these places accounted of almost 90% of all ship breaking in the world till some years ago. There are around 170 yards in Alang, Gujarat, the nerve centre of ship breaking industry in India and it employs around 50,000 people. The ship scrapping activity contributes more than 200,000 tones of scrap every year to the re-rolling mills and thus accounting for 60% of domestic production of metal bars. This is the primary reason why government hasn’t banned the ship scrapping industry in India despite environmental concerns.

The Indian government is yet to ratify Basel Convention, but if it does than it will help a lot controlling unwarranted industrial waste into India and will also help in making this industry more organized.