I want to dedicate my first post in India to the ball of chaos I'd like to call the New Delhi Railway Station. Sam and I certainly weren't there en route to Agra-- we were there for work, an intensive one-week audit of Chintan's pilot waste collection program at India's busiest train station.
The purpose of the project itself is rather straightforward. Chintan wants its waste-pickers to collect waste from each train arriving and docking at the station. The waste-pickers bring the waste back to the Chintan work station (behind the tracks) and segregate the recyclables before selling them to middlemen junk-dealers for x rupees/kilo. The revenue generated through the sale of water bottles, bottle caps, aluminum tin lunch containers, paper, cardboard, and roti (bread) is then used to cover the costs of building and maintaining the work station site, the waste-pickers' monthly salaries, their uniforms and equipment, etc. It's a relatively simple model of environmentally-responsible micro-waste management, but boy is it one big logistical nightmare! (Just imagine how chaotic an Indian train station can get or see the picture below for a visual reference. It is the norm for trains here to be delayed for 6-7 hours or even for up to a night!)
The first few days of our audit were all about logistics, logistics, logistics. Day and night, we ran back and forth between all 16 platforms counting the number of cars, passengers, and workers per train as well as recording down the passenger to bottle ratios, scheduled vs actual arrival times, and all conflicts and obstructions that were observed. I'd like to call this leg of the project extreme consulting (as in extreme sports). We were behind the tracks, inside the train cabins, and up and down all 16 platforms. There was no time to wipe the sweat off your brow and absolutely no time to return the many stares you get from Indian men (and believe me, as a foreign girl in a salwar you do get plenty!)
Another important component of our initial audit was merely to observe how the work was done. A lot of inefficiencies were discovered during this process. For instance, we timed how long it took for the collected waste to be transported from a train arriving at platform 1 to the workstation located behind platform 16. It took approximately one hour for two waste-pickers to push a barrow cart of garbage bags the distance of 16 platform widths. Bottles kept falling out the bags, the narrow paths were clogged with traffic from other transporters, and in certain bends, rocks had to be cleared by hand just so the cart could pass through. We are now looking into alternative routes for transporting the waste or carts with more utility (ie: walled bins on wheels that the waste-pickers can throw the garbage bags into as opposed to wooden wheel barrows that the garbage bags are strapped to with string).
Other noted observations included the extended length of time it takes for passengers to alight from the sleeper (overnight) cars. Because the waste-pickers can only enter the cars after all passengers have alighted, the time they have to collect from the cars before the train pulls out of the platform is significantly shortened; as a result they are able to collect less recyclable waste to sell. We have suggested increasing the number of workers at the platform of each arriving sleeper train (taking them from the reserve of workers segregating waste at the workstation) to ensure that the maximum amount of waste can be collected.
Towards the end of our initial audit, I was tasked with working out a business model for the project. I did my first ever cost - revenue schedule on an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the surplus/shortfall of the project up to year 1 (and I didn't even need an i-banking internship to learn this!) I was able to project several scenarios for the project aimed at increasing revenue and lowering costs-- this will mainly have to be done through increasing the efficiency of the 60 waste-pickers we currently have at hand. The crux will have to be the strategic deployment of workers to platforms to ensure we are maximizing our volume of recyclables.
Since this post is getting rather long (and this blogger rather sleepy), I'll end with a series of shots taken during our project. After all, a picture is supposedly worth 1,000 words (and with captions probably 1,500!)
The waste-pickers say their uniforms have helped them gain more respect from train personnel, passengers, and the general passerby.
There is a sense of order to the waste we manage (inside). Sam stands outside with a pile of trash that has been dumped irresponsibly by anonymous parties.
Contrast is stark between the professionalism of Chintan's waste-pickers and the lack thereof of individual scavengers. (Chintan screens its workers for a history clean of 'smack' addictions, a rampant problem among waste-pickers)
(1) Bottle caps are removed, (2) remaining water is dumped into a tank to be used for cleaning out food waste from aluminum tin - no waste - (see below), (3) bottle is crushed and set in a bag to be weighed and sold.
Workers cleaning and segregating the aluminum tin from train lunches before leaving them out to dry.
Segregated waste is then weighed and sewed into these white bags before being taken to the junk-dealer.Our week at the station ended with a delightful surprise from the NYT. It seems that they too had sent representatives of their own to scout out our station while we were there. The article definitely framed our work at the station in a wider, more relevant context:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/business/global/16indiarail.html
With more to come,
Michelle
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