A hyperlocal recycling initiative by residents expands and gains greater surface area in Chennai

Anything that is seen will be seen again and again and yet again: sometimes only in the mind, and sometimes as a concrete reality. Call it a positive case of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, resident groups are ‘seeing’ eWaste more often; and they are also seeing the necessity of carefully seeing these dangerous discards all the way to the place from where they would not make an insidious comeback. The fact that eWaste requires careful handling meant that it had been persistently kept as a footnote in recycling initiatives promoted by residents’ groups in Chennai. Over the last three years, the scene has shifted with a handful of groups — Residents of Kasturbanagar Association (ROKA) being a prominent one among them — beginning to see eWaste as a category deserving focussed attention, one that involves diligent mass collection of the waste by residents and leaving the recyling and disposal part to the experts.

This residents’ group from the neighbourhood of Kasturba Nagar has organised five eWaste drives in three years, with the fifth one in the offing (February 11-13 at Bala Vidya Mandir in Gandhi Nagar). After initial misgivings had been replaced with the confidence that can proceed only from the experience of repeated engagement, ROKA started combining eWaste collection with the collection of old clothes, and later mattresses and pillows and footwear hopelessly past their use-by date.

The more significant achievement is that it has consistently sought to increase the surface area of this initiative by delinking it from its hyperlocal moorings.

Residents from other parts of Chennai would drop off eWaste and return with the spark of an idea to have a similar initiative in their neck of the woods. ROKA has worked on the spark and that is how Manapakkam residents got to have a similar drive in their locality a few months ago.

This fifth drive — which focusses on eWaste discards, old clothes clothes, mattresses, pillows and footwear, largely that are too wornout to be reused — steps into the unchartered territory of having “multiple collection centres’, each functioning with a great degree of autonomy. Only that on the last day of the drive, they would all have uniformly collected the recyclables and kept them ready to be picked up. Janani Venkitesh of ROKA notes that all the groups are associated with the exercise on a pro bono basis. Even the recyclers do not seek a fee for collection of the waste,Given this situation, there are inevitable questions around how communities in a locality participating in the drive would eventually move the recyclables to a common point for collection by the recyclers. In Perumbakkam, where multiple communities have warmed up to the exercise, this logistical question is being grappled with.

Believing such wrinkles can be ironed out in subsequent editions, the organisers can pat themselves for the initiative’s increasing surface area.

On February 4, Janani Venkitesh shared that simultaneously, during the ROKA exercise, Rani Meyyammai Towers in RA Puram is running a drive for its residents; and Trellis South in Vadapalani for its own. She also notes that residents of Kotturpuram and Kottur Gardens are figuring out how they can participate in the exercise.

Janani elaborates: “In fact, we decided to have it down there in Tambaram as well, but realised that we do not have the bandwidth to go and support residents of Tambaram if they were to organise a drive this time. I do have a contact in Chitlapakkam — someone who is active in the Chitlapakkam Rising community — and he said it was too short a notice and has sought to know if ROKA could support them if they decide to have it in March. As far as this initiative goes, Tambaram is one of the areas that wait to be broken through. There have been a lot of calls in the last two to three years from residents of neighbourhoods in the Tambaram region, but unfortunately we have not been able to go there.”

At a drive organised by R.K. Nagar Residents Association. Photo: Ragu R  

Janani notes that due to the pandemic, the bi-annual recycling initiative has gone a bit off the rails, in terms of its timing. She calls it sad, as “we have noticed over these three years that even two drives a year are not sufficient.”

Initiaitve by RMT

Last month, Rani Meyyammai Towers in RA Puram jettisoned discarded electrical parts that had accumulated to a proportion that could not be glossed over as a faint smudge on the escutcheon. The community got it bundled out as scrap, only to find an uncomfortable thought creeping in. There was the lingering doubt if the discards got adequately recycled, notes Neela Govindaraj, who is part of the managing committee at RMT.

“Probably, certain parts were recycled and the rest went to the landfill.” That was not wholesome thought to carry around in one’s mind. They found a way to banish it forever: A decision to seek certainty about the recylcles leaving the community. So, when they learnt about the ROKA drive, RMT had no hesitation in taking part in it, indirectly, “to spread the idea” about responsible disposal of recyclables, particularly eWaste, among residents.

Notes Neela, “The assurance that what we collect and give away is not going to the landfill is a great thing.”

Perumbakkam on recycling map

There are still loose ends to be tied. There is a sense of uncertainty and it is audible: so is the excitement of having a mega eWaste and clothes collection drive in Perumbakkam. That sums up the current state of Srividya Giridharan, a member of the solid waste management volunteering team in Cherry Pick, a 380-unit gated community. Perumbakkam is a village panchayat with a face that is undergoing a realignment surgery, twisting it unrecognisably from pastoral to urban. On sections of the locality, there is a rash of gated communities, largely inhabited by IT professionals. Densely populated for a village panchayat, the locality has an overwhelming garbage question to answer.

Though eager to see Perumbakkam participating in the drive, Srividya is however in a flutter as she tries to take in the logistics of it, on the evening of February 4.

“Janani Venkitesh from Residents of Kasturbanagar Association (ROKA) sought to know if the collection could be done at a central place in Perumbakkam. Somebody was communicating with the panchayat if any help can be obtained in terms of keeping the collected waste. The challenge lies in the fact that the ROKA drive wants to do everything: it is not just eWaste, but also old clothes, mattresses and pillows and footwear. In case we get a good response, the material collected would be huge, and moving it to a central place would be a challenge,” explains Srividya.

On the evening of February 4, it was clear Urban Tree Oxygen, Radiance and Cherry Pick, big-sized communities situated on the same lane, would go for it, first collecting the waste in their respective communities, and then working together to get the collected waste to a common space.

Srividya notes: “If the collection is not humongous, among the three of us, we could move the material to a common point using our cars. As we send out the word, many other communities are likely to join in, and the logistics of that situation can be formidable. There is however a lot of positive thinking that is encouraging. A temporary WhatsApp group had been created for the Perumbakkam communities, and the participants think there is nothing to worry about and that even if the common gathering point for the collected waste were to be a bit too far for their liking, the logistics can be managed.”

Amidst the uncertainty, Srividya underlines two factors that make the exercise invigorating. “One, that the drive has come to Perumbakkam on the city outskirts through ROKA. And two, the fact that the drive is focussing on things that are beyond redemption and simply cannot be reused. Because these are things that make it to the landfill.”

‘TSR initiaitve’ in Vadapalani

Trellis South practises a home-grown version of “corporate social responsibility” — Trellis Social Responsibility (TSR).

There is nothing even faintly corporate about the composition of Trellis South: it isa gated community in Vadapalani that plays the sedulous ape, patterning its initiatives after best CSR practices. TSR — as a group of resident-volunteers at this community is called — reflects this philosophy with the efficiency of a cheval glass every time it swings into action, the first time being around last Deepavali when the community organised an old clothes donation drive.

At the time when interviews were being done for this article, Ravi Swaminathan, a management professional and resident-volunteer, who can successfully claim patent rights for the term, was rallying the TSR team around the eWaste-cum-clothes collection drive, one being organised in synchronicity with ROKA’s — on February 11,12 and 13.

Simultaneously, in the week leading up to the drive, the community would also “focus on increasing the percentage of residents efficiently practising source-segregation.” Ravi remarks that the drive will focus more on the unusables among the used items, as “these are the things people do not know what to do with”. In the week leading up to the collection drive, TSR volunteers would spread the word about it among the residents, through written material and WhatsApp communication.

On a related note, Ravi points out that TSR is primed for two roles: helping the underprivileged and two, helping the environment.