Recycling plastic costs high in Kerala

Thiruvananthapuram: There are plastic recycling units  in Kollam, Kottayam, Ernakulam and Thrissur. There are also small grinding units, like the one in Manvila industrial estate, but they stick to the waste they themselves produce. The news might come as a surprise to many, as all the plastic collected by the city corporation is usually taken to recycling factories in Tamil Nadu.

Many are unaware that these exist. In a media workshop conducted by Suchitwa Mission some months ago, the mission’s executive director K. Vasuki had said that except for a unit in Kannur, they do not know of any recycling units in the state.

The mayor, when asked why they preferred the units in Tamil Nadu, said that the units in the state prefer the better quality plastic like bottles. “The corporation collects all kinds of plastic, but they take only high quality plastic,” he said.

However, many plastic manufacturers, to whom DC spoke, said that recyclers are willing to take plastic waste, provided the plastic is free of organic matter. P.J. Mathew, a manufacturer in Kochi, says, “unwashed milk covers and such soiled plastic will cost additional labour charge, as these have to be washed before recycling.”

Many times, there will  not be just organic but hospital waste, according to Mohammed Bawa, who has a recycling unit in Kochi. “The women labourers who were assigned with sorting the job stopped coming as there is no dignity in dealing with such waste. Now the unit is used only to process the waste my factory produces,” he says.

In Tamil Nadu, labour is cheaper and land is plenty, says Kerala Plastic Manufacturers’ Association president Joseph Sanders. “In a thickly populated place, there will be protests over keeping plastic with decomposing organic waste,” he says.

Another condition which can make recycling easy is segregation of plastic at the source-level. “Kerala’s per capita use of plastic per day will be around 13 kilos. The usage is above 20 in developed countries, but there the source-level segregation is efficient,” says Mathew. What they were all pointing to was a change in the waste management habits of individuals.