Hope it is not a ‘waste’ of time

Deepkamal Kaur
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, February 2

A Chevening scholar and having completed his masters degree in social innovations last year from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Liakatbir Singh Veghal is experimenting on something that can bring a major reform in waste management not just in Jalandhar but across many big cities of the country.

The road ahead

To begin with, the team will collect plastic items only from some wards. They will buy plastics from scrap dealers, rag pickers and the staff involved in door-to-door collection of waste in these wards. After collection and bailing, they will get it transported to the designated nearest recyclers as proposed by the NGO’s logistics team. In Punjab, there are only two authorised plastic recyclers.

Working remotely from here as the programme manager of a Gurgaon-based NGO ‘Karo Sambhav’, Liakatbir and his organisation are aiming that nothing which is recyclable ends up in landfills after 2025.

“Since September last year, we have begun operations in four big cities, including Goa and Dehradun, from where we are collecting plastics and electronic waste (e-waste) and handing them over to the authorised recyclers. The process involves setting up collection centres for plastic waste, making purchases from scrap dealers, doing preliminary processing, making bails of 300-350 kg and transporting them to the recyclers,” he said.

The youngster said, “Since I belong to Jalandhar, we want to start operations from here as well. We are in talks with the Municipal Corporation (MC) authorities and they have liked the proposal. We have held a few meetings but the MoU is yet to be signed. If this happens, we will also provide the MC with all technological inputs as to how much plastic is generated from the city on a daily basis, which would act as parameters for cutting down on the usage levels, how much have the plastics been sold for recycling daily and stuff like that. We will provide authentic, updated information through our mobile application which can help the authorities take policy decisions accordingly.”

Liakatbir said as per the discussions, it had been proposed that Chuggitti can be the area for collection, bailing and storage of plastics from the city.

“But if this does not work, we have also given the MC a proposal to provide an alternate site at Vikaspuri area. To begin with, we will collect plastics only from some wards. We will buy plastics from the scrap dealers, rag pickers and the staff involved in door-to-door collection of waste in these wards. After collection and bailing, we will get it transported to the designated nearest recyclers as proposed by our NGO’s logistics team,” he shared. In Punjab, there are only two authorised plastic recyclers.

Liakatbir is the son of social activist Lakhbir Singh, who runs NGO ‘Pehal’ in the city. He talked about the organisation. “Since about last four-five years, Pehal had begun collecting e-waste from the city. We have a collection centre at a site in front of Verka milk plant near Amritsar bypass. It opens daily from 10 am to 11 am. Scrap dealers who collect electronic waste from the entire city sell it to us. After some days when we feel that we have collected enough, we get it transported. For this, we had already tied up with Karo Sambhav.”

However, an ideal situation to run this project would be when people become so much aware and start segregation of plastics at home. “Also, we wish that we are able to run our e-waste collection centre for full day and people themselves take initiative and sell off the waste electronic stuff to us.”

MC Congress councillor Balraj Thakur says he had gone through the proposal and believes that if the project takes off the city could become plastic-free.