Tag Archives: india

Building a compost plant, part 1

This is part 1 in series that I’m assuming will be extended with a couple of more entries as the next month goes by. As I’ve said previously, I’m currently in Bokaro Steel City, working together with my CEO on consulting a local NGO on building a compost plant.

 

Building a compost plant isn’t as easy as it might seem. First of all there are a number of questions that need to be answered – how many tons of waste per day should it handle? what is the organic content (vs. recyclables and other materials) of the waste? where do we have the land to build one? what kind of support do we have from the municipality? what are the funds available to build it? how should the design of the plant be to ensure best efficiency / lowest cost? what building materials to use? And so on and so on.

 

After a bit more than a week of work (albeit at a not too high pace – I’ll blog about Indian time-keeping shortly!), we’re now coming as far as that we have all the contractors in place, the land, the money and the design of the plant done, and the leveling of the ground has got underway. The plant will be built on a site next to the general dumpsite, which means that we don’t need to worry about any neighbors complaining (in case they’re not bothered by the dump site – I’m sure they won’t mind a composting site) and that space is ample.

 

Some tricky things we bumped into during the construction phase were trying to figure out a good design of the plant (none of us being construction engineers), finding the right materials and eventually getting the budget to be slim enough to fit our NGO partner.

 

Personally, I found one situation especially challenging. In India, one of the most commonly used materials for roofing is cement laden with asbestos. Asbestos cement is highly toxic, but very durable, fire-retardant and quite cheap. It’s by now forbidden in over 50 countries and would probably have been put on an international list of restricted materials were it not for Canada’s financial interest in asbestos mining. For the project – the most economic and simple option would be asbestos. Pragmatically, you could argue “this is not going to be the place where the workers are exposed to the most asbestos throughout their lives, and it’s an open area so there’s not going to be greatly increased exposure for the operators of the plants”. Arguing based on principle you would say “working with a sustainable venture means not creating built in risks that will be exposed when the asbestos eventually degrades and might create health problems as far as 20-30 years from now, the only way to stop asbestos from being used is not to buy it”.

 

I think I’m getting my position pretty clear by now – what’s yours?
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An insight into the Indian psyche

An early-morning sight-seeing trip to cooling pond #1 of Bokaro steel plant gave me a direct channel into a part of the Indian psyche. The cooling pond is a raised, artificial pond constructed to provide clean, cooling water for the steel plant. It is surrounded by a large raised wall and wetlands, as well as green areas. The pond is huge, somewhere on the scale of 22 km around, and has a number of planted fish living inside it (which you can fish at a fee per hook). 

As we traveled along the sides of the pond, we soon found ourselves surrounded by no-one, an event that so far been quite uncommon in my (limited, yes) Indian experience. We took the motorcycle all the way out to the edge of a small ridge jutting out into the lake. As we reached the end and got off the motorcycle to take some pictures, one of my colleagues proclaims "Not much people come here often, it's very, very lonely here" in a voice indicating this being a place that gave him the shudders (like an abandoned house or such).

His short statement left me thinking, "This would be exactly the place your average Swede would describe peaceful, beautiful, serene and, yes, even lonely". However, in the case of the average Swede standing there, lonely would indicate something positive, it would indicate a place where you could be left in peace with your thoughts. For my Indian friend there was nothing positive about his usage of the word lonel, rather he was clearly uncomfortable about not being surrounded by throngs of people.

When I explained that in Sweden, most places were like this (indeed, Sweden has a third as many inhabitants as small Jharkhand province and a tenth as many as neighboring Bihar), he shrugged and said Sweden must be a very lonely and sad place. 

In a country as crowded in India, his attitude is quite appropriate, and has undoubtedly developed through living life surrounded by a massive amount of people at all times. Thinking of it, it seems quite obvious, but it reminds me of how very subtle the differences in how we perceive the world can be and how markedly they are shaped by our surroundings.

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Arrival in India + Bokaro Steel City

So, just about a week ago I arrived in India. Rather than being exposed to the rumoured poor Indian AIESEC reception service, I had an amazing one. I got picked up at the airport by one of the AIESECers in Delhi. She took me to one of the intern flats for the interns staying a shorter time and sure, that wasn't exactly an amazing place to be – but rather than react with disgust as I noted some of the other interns had, I felt that it was somehow within my frame of expectations.
 
Day after arriving I took a 3 hour detour to the office (via north Delhi, when my office was in south) and finally got to meet my manager for the next 6 months – Parag Gupta. A really down-to-earth,interesting guy. I am sure I'll pick up quite a lot of things from him. We spent some time looking through our new office (just rented that same day – this is really a start-up for sure) after which he introduced me to the close-by oasis: Select City Mall, an almost crucial place in case the crowded, hot and hectic Delhi life gets to you.
 
The very next day we headed out to Bokaro Steel City where our first project is to be located. After a 14 hour train ride, I find myself, within 3 days of arriving in India, working with Parag and a local NGO to create the plans and starting to build a 1-tonne organic compost plant!
 
Exciting times.

So long – I’m going to India (… and what will I be doing there?)

Having arrived at the airport, changed currency, gone through the security check, sat down, got my horrible (overpriced) airport espresso, flipped on my laptop and turned on my travel playlist, I am finally beginning to get that for the next 6 months I'll be in Delhi.

I guess somehow this post is a bit overdue, I have actually known for a bit over a month now that I'd be going to Delhi, and I've been many times over been telling people about what I'll be doing there – however, I didn't actually get to writing here about what I'll be up to. 

So, as said, I'm going to be spending 6 months in Delhi where I'll be working for an organization called Waste Ventures. As most of the people who've spent any amount of time around me knows, I've had a big interest in waste for some time, and now I had the great opportunity of gaining some practical experience of this area. Waste Ventures is a triple bottom-line (environmental, economical, social) business working with solid waste management enabling waste pickers to increase their income through implementing a scheme of service fees, recycling, composting, carbon offsets and biogas generation and through these activities have a positive environmental impact. I'll be helping Waste Ventures establishing their processes and routines, do work on evaluating potential partners and sites as well as (I'm sure, as it's a start-up ;)) a wide range of other things. 
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I got the chance to work with Waste Ventures through the Artemisia and AIESEC Social Business Ventures program. In this program Artemisia supports a number of students and recent graduates to experience working with social businesses in India and Latin America. We're a group of fellows in this program who will work with different social ventures throughout India at the same time so parallell to our internships we will also be able to connect with each other and create a common learning environment. 

Anyway, so that's the brief summary of what I'll be up to for the next 6 months. I'm really excited, as I see this is as one of my first real hands on experiences of what I think I'd like to work with in the future. For the next months, expect updates here on waste, social business and life in India 🙂

PS. If you'd like to learn a bit more about Waste Ventures and the founder Parag Gupta who I'll be working with, check out his blog at Social Edge called Talking Trash.