Battery Recycling Program

Shuddham Wants Your Batteries

Used batteries are hazardous waste.  They contain toxic heavy metals that end up in the waste stream.  In humid conditions or when thrown into dumping grounds or landfills, the battery casings corrode and the metals may contaminate the ground water.  When incinerated, the toxics are released into the atmosphere, and the incinerator ash is contaminated.

The two most common battery types disposed of in Pondicherry are alkaline and zinc chloride, each type making up about 50% of the 23 types of batteries collected so far at Shuddham.  These batteries contain mercury, which can cause brain and nervous system damage to humans.

There is currently no safe handling or recycling of batteries or portable e-waste in Pondicherry.  In order to take one hazardous stream of toxic waste out of the system, Shuddham is collecting used batteries to be sent for recyling.  Shuddham has set up collection points at retail outlets located in the Raj Bhavan ward of Pondicherry, such as Grinde R. Sridharan and Bon Appetit, as well as at the Lycee Francais, the French Instutute and Creative Art of Souls.

Once Shuddham has collected a ton of batteries, they will have it sent to E-Parisaraa, an e-waste recycling company in Bangalore.  At the moment, E-Parisaraa is also collecting batteries.  Once they have sufficient volume, they will either send it abroad for recycling or set up a processing facility in India.

What can you do?

1. Reduce.  Limit the number of battery-operated instruments, appliances and tools you use.
2. Reuse.  Purchase rechargeable batteries.  The best option is nickel metal hydride batteries that contain no toxic heavy metals.  Other batteries, including nickel cadmium and rechargeable alkalide batteries, still contain toxic metals such as cadmium and mercury.
3. Recycle.  In Pondicherry, you can drop off your used batteries at one of the collection centers mentioned above.  Or, start your own collection box.

Lycee Francais Students Visit Parivartan

Listening to Rajamanikam

25 March 2009

Today, the eighth standard students of Lycee Francais de Pondichery visited Parivarthan, Shuddham’s resource center.

Watching the secondary sorting

After Rajamankiam explained the process, they watched the secondary sorting taking place.

Sorted Materials waiting to be "baled"

The Lycee does not currently segregate their garbage into compostable and recyclable materials – their mixed waste can only go to the dump.  The students are now committed to working with Rajamanikam to reorganize their garbage into segregated waste streams.

Shuddham President Probir Banerjee Honored for Excellence in Social Service

This morning, in a Republic Day ceremony at Pondicherry’s Indira gandhi Stadium, Lieutenant Governor Govind Singh Gurjar honored our dear friend and colleague Probir Banerjee for his extraordinary devotion to voluntary service to the people of Pondicherry.

Probir serves as the president of both Shuddham, the innovative NGO pioneering simple, effective solid waste management strategies in Pondicherry, and of PondyCAN! (Pondicherry Citizens Action Network), which fights for critical environmental protection and advocates a farseeing program of integrated regional planning. He works tirelessly and selflessly to staunch the erosion of quality of life in our town and to assure that its future will be healthier, happier, and sustainable.

There were two interesting aspects to the Republic Day ceremonies award from which speak volumes about Probir’s impact on the well-being of his community. First, of the two-dozen-or-so awardees felicitated the Lieutenant Governor, Probir alone was honored for social service. Other honorees were policemen, intellectuals, athletes, students, and educational institutions. Second, the event program, which contains a lengthy exposition of the LG’s development agenda for the coming year contains the following item:

To keep pace with the developments, the Government could hardly afford to ignore environmental protection. Sustainable development is the watchword and toi ensure that development is not made at the cost of environmental degradation, the Government of Puducherry has constituted a committee to campaign and implement a “Clean and Green Puducherry” policy. The Ousteri Lake has been declared a protected place for avian fauna. The Governmentis willing to re-examine its policies toward the prevention of coastal erosion.

Most of these ideas reached the Governor’s Palace for the first time in a series of meetings, led by Probir, introducing the new head of the Union Territory government to the work of Shuddham and PondyCAN!. The stated willingness of the Government to take a serious look at Pondicherry’s massive, development-induced coastal management disaster represents a major policy shift. The politicians and administrative bureaucrats in Pondicherry have long supported port development and hard-structure “defenses” to coastal erosion in the form of seawalls and groynes, notwithstanding the patent stupidity of this approach. It’s not clear that the Lieutenant Governor’s good intentions can alter the destructive course they have set. But the mere fact that the question is on the public agenda illustrates the effectiveness of the work of Probir and PondyCAN! in less that two-short years.

So, as you celebrate Republic Day, spare a thought for Probir Banerjee – a kind of present day freedom fighter whose struggle is just beginning to etch its way into the national consciousness.

Inauguration of Parivartan by the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry 25 November 2008

PRESS NOTE

INAUGURATION OF SHUDDHAM’S “PARIVARTAN” COMPOSTING AND RECYCLING CENTER BY THE LT. GOVERNOR, PUDUCHERRY

At 11:00am on Tuesday 25 November 2008, Shri Govind Singh Gurjar, His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, will inaugurate the opening of “Parivartan, Shuddham’s composting and recycling center for segregated solid waste collected from the Rajbhavan Ward in Pondicherry.

The following dignitaries will be in attendance for this auspicious event:

• Thiru A. Namassivayam

Hon’ble Minister Local Administration

• Sri Ramesh Tiwari

Secretary, Local Administration

• Manoj Das Gupta

Managing Trustee, Sri Aurobindo Ashram

• Thiru E. Vallavan

Director, Local Adminsitration

• Smt B.Sridevi

Chairperson Pondicherry Municipality

• Thiru Natrajan

Chairperson, Vilianur Commune Panchayat

• Thiru A. Balasubramaniam

Commissioner Pondicherry Municipality

• Thiru G. Aneetchan

Commissioner Villiyanur Commune Panchayat

• Sri V. Arjunan

President Odianpet Village Panchayat

• Smt Agilarasam

Councilor Odianpet Commune Panchayat

The inauguration will conclude with a tree-planting ceremony initiated by the Lt Governor.

The construction of Parivartan was funded by Direct Relief International, Santa Barbara, California. The land has been leased by the Sri Aurbindo Ashram.

Presently the residential and commercial solid waste in Pondicherry is disposed off in the only operational municipal dump yard at Karuvadikuppam or illegally dumped in the outskirts of town and around water bodies such as Ousteri Lake and Thengaithittu Lagoon. There is no treatment of solid waste done at the municipal dump; the waste is burned from time to time to make room for additional waste. This system of managing solid waste is a health hazard to the workers, the residents near the dumps, and all the citizens of Pondicherry, as the environment and natural resources are degraded through air pollution and toxic leaching into the soil and groundwater and vector-borne diseases are spread.

The government cannot solve this problem without the active involvement and collaboration of all sections of society; citizens, students, the business community, the media and NGOs.

About Shuddham:

Shuddham is a not-for profit, non-governmental organization based in Pondicherry. One of Shuddham’s objectives is to create a model neighbourhood where the government, citizens, students, and other stakeholders collaborate to keep the area clean. Over the past six years, Shuddham has worked to evolve an alternate system of waste disposal

Shuddham’s “zero-garbage” pilot program started with 80 houses and was inaugurated by the then Lt. Governor Rajini Rai in April 2002. This “zero-garbage” program entails the door-to-door collection of segregated household waste. The biodegradable waste is turned into compost and the recyclable items are further sorted and sent for recycling. The program has since grown in stages, first with the addition of 250 households in February 2003, then an addition of 700 households in September 2006. Today Shuddham manages over 16 kilometers of streets and 1,200 households in Rajbhavan ward, collecting a total of approximately 10 tons of “resource” a day.

The segregated waste collected in the Rajbhavan Ward will be taken to Parivartan, where the bio-degradable waste is composted (both ordinary and vermi-compost) and recyclable waste is further sorted. Prior to the construction of the 5,000 square foot recycling center, Shuddham operated the vermi-composting unit in a member’s yard and rented a small shed in Vaithikuppam for secondary sorting.

Shuddham is working with the Government to spread this “Beautiful Pondicherry” movement.

For additional information, please contact:

Ajit G. Reddy (Mobile no 9894092933)

Secretary, Shuddham

39 Rue Lally Tollendal

Pondcherry 605 001

Telephone: (413) 421-0032

Chandigarh Administration Calls for Segregation at Source

Chandigarh, a Union Territory that serves as the capital of two states – Haryana and Punjab – lays claim to many firsts, including the first planned city in India.  Chandigarh was the first Indian city to ban smoking in public places on July 15, 2007.  And on October 2, 2008, Chandigarh banned the use of plastic carry bags.  While the city has already taken many steps to improve its waste disposal system, including removing pubic garbage bins and setting up sehaj safai kendras (SSKs), administrators have felt the need to improve the waste segregation system by segregating the waste at source.  Currently, waste is collected door-to-door, as in the Shuddham model, but unlike the Shuddham model, the waste is segregated at the SSKs.

It is no wonder that the segregation of mixed waste at the SSKs is not very effective.  Mixing waste at the source makes seperation difficult and precludes the recycling of much of the waste.  The organic waste is processed at the Solid Waste Processing Plant (another “first”) in Dadu Majra into pellets that are used in the cement industry.

Shuddham picks up waste which has been segregated at source – at the household level – and composts the organic material and resorts the recyclables which are then sold for various uses.  In the Shuddham case, almost all garbage (except hazardous materials, which are picked up separately) becomes a resource that is recycled.

Ayudh Puja at Shuddham

Drawing a kolam in front of Shuddham office

Yesterday, the workers at Shuddham celebrated Ayudh puja.  The ammas who sweep the streets cleaned the office and the street in front of the office, washed their chetties (aluminum containers used to pick up waste), and washed and decorated their modified tricycles.  The supervisors washed their motorcycles and scooters, and the vehicle drivers washed and decorated their vans.  The ammas conducted a small puja at the office with a few invited guest, including the councilor of Raj Bhavan ward and one of the MLA’s deputies and other friends of Shuddham.

Washing the street in front of the Shuddham office

Sweeping the street

Washing the chetties

Clean and decorated tricycle

Tricycle tire

South side supervisor washing his scooter

Shuddham's Tata Ace

Watch the New Shuddham Video!

Watch the new Shuddham video, celebrating the wonderful work done by the Shuddham “Beautifiers” to help keep Pondicherry’s Raj Bhavan neighborhood clean and to help create a model for urban waste management that can reverse the epidemic of filth that plagues India.

Health and Freedom in a Simple Piece of Cloth

Where most people see trash, Shuddham sees opportunity; so it was only natural that fashion designer Anjali Schiavino would turn to Shuddham with her problem. Anjali was making an exclusive line of organic cotton clothing for a European client and wondered if there was a constructive use to which the pattern trimmings could be put. Thanks to our friend Anshu Gupta, we came up with an answer which Anjali immediately proclaimed as, “super cool!”

Shuddham Presents on Solid Waste Management Policy at National Workshop

This weekend, Shuddham participated in the National Workshop on Environmental Policy Integration for Greening the Indian Economy at Pondicherry University. We were asked to present a paper and give a presentation on approaches to policy development for solid waste management.

Simply click-away to read our paper, The Parameters of Policy Development for Effective Solid Waste Management in Pondicherry, or view our presentation slides.

New Resource Center Construction Well Underway

Construction of the new resource center is well underway, and Phase I should be completed by April. The center will contain discrete areas for secondary sorting of inorganic waste for recycling, conventional composting, vermicomposting, and research and development. In this latter section, we will be looking at high-value ways of extracting value from our waste streams, preferably right here within our community.

The fuel briquetting experiments are one example of our R&D efforts; studying the feasibility of replicating Goonj’s Not Just a Piece of Cloth program for the reuse of scrap cotton from local clothing companies is another.

Stay tuned for news of the opening!