Untapped Resource

CIRCULAR ECONOMY IN INDIA HAS GROWN IN THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS, BUT THE POTENTIAL OF THE SECTOR REMAINS UNREALISED

AT THE industrial estate road in Vapi, the hub of paper mills in south Gujarat, there is feverish activity. Lorries carrying imported wastepaper make a beeline. Mountains of trash can be seen heaped inside the mills, ready to be recycled. In what can be considered a golden example of the circular economy model, paper recycling is booming in India, with a surge in the import of wastepaper.

Worldwide, countries are refusing to be dumping grounds of trash, forcing developed economies, which are huge waste generators, to look for alternatives. In 2017, China announced a ban on the import of 24 types of scraps, including paper, applicable from January 1, 2018. The announcement sent shock waves in the UK, the US and the European Union, which are still trying to find ways to manage their waste. What came as a shocker to the West gave a new lease of life to paper manufacturers in India, many of whom had been struggling due to the shortage of raw materials.

Paper already accounts 50 per cent of all dry waste generated in urban India, followed by plastic (14 per cent), glass (6 per cent), textile (5 per cent), wood (3 per cent), metal (1.5 per cent) and residue (20 per cent), as per a 2011 working paper prepared by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion under the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry. After the Chinese ban, India’s import of wastepaper spiked. The figure stood at 4 million tonnes in 2017-18 but grew by 23 percent to around 5 million tonnes between April and December 2018. This increase was just 1.3 percent in 2015-16 and 2.2 percent in 2016-17. With abundant supply, wastepaper prices fell by 16 percent to an average R13.7 per kg in the first half of 2018-19 from 16.3 per kg in the same period the previous year.