Plastic recycling

Today, almost everything around us is made of one type of plastic or another. From the bags we use whilst shopping to soft drink bottles; from jerry cans to eye droppers, toys to cell phones to just about anything you can think of. This of course has resulted in an exponential increase in the amount of plastic waste that is generated by society.

Since plastic is non-biodegradable and in fact constitutes a health and environmental hazard the problem of dealing with all this waste is an acute one. Once again however, the residents and hard workers of Dharavi have come to the rescue.

It is estimated that about 80% of Mumbai’s plastic and dry waste is recycled in Dharavi, and the so-called slum even receives waste materials from across the country to be processed in the recycling centres. This is a huge amount of waste that is dealt with as compared to just 20% of waste that is properly recycled in other, more developed nations.

Possibly one reason for this is the availability of labour to sift through the garbage heaps and segregate the various types of waste material. These rag pickers are amply supplied with waste material by the city of Mumbai which generates a staggering 7025 tonnes of waste daily.