As a materials science student, a degree that to my disappointment is rather small and unknown, I suddenly have the urge to elaborate in more detail my fascination for materials and why it is so crucial to gain deeper understanding of materials. It actually started in the third year of my bachelor in doing the minor “International Entrepreneurship & Development” (IE&D), where I went to India and fell in love with waste.
In Shanghai, I became determined to work in the field of sustainability and strongly believed that engineering would be the key, so that I could optimise processes and efficiencies. However, it wasn’t until coming in contact with Silvia de Vaan and Niels van den Hoek, founders of a social enterprise called SweepSmart, that there was a much bigger underlying problem.
The conveyor belt we built in India.
SweepSmart is a startup that aims to improve the collection and separation efficiency of waste in developing countries where waste is a problem, such as India at the time and now expanding to Indonesia. A majority of the waste pickers roam the streets of landfills looking for valuable materials to collect and sell to scrap dealers, often exposed to all sorts of potential health problems. The lucky few waste pickers who work at an organised “dry waste collection centre” sit on the floor on pink cushions elbow deep in garbage bags that contained a sorts of hazards, ranging from sanitary products to needles from laboratories and hospitals in the vicinity. Silvia and Niels saw the problem and spent two years exploring India trying to find out the best approach to tackle the problem and where to start. By strategically implementing a system to monitor progress through a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) dashboard, from skills that Silvia picked up at BCG and knowledge Niels had from working at Van Gansewinkel they started to put their plan in motion.
In June 2015 I was selected to participate in the minor IE&D, that would allow me to go abroad for three months and work with a start-up in a developing country and contribute to society. Everything that I was hoping for. Before I knew it, I landed in Bangalore at the end of October with Jair and we were living in Cooke’s Town together with Enid and Floor, three students from my minor. Now, I won’t be giving a day to day recollection but there are two moments that I explicitly remember that really triggered me.
Example of a train carriage in India, where I was sitting but then full of Indians.
This is the view from the train, although this was not in Jaipur, it shows the nature the train passes through.
I was on the train one day in January, on my way to Jaipur from Pushkar, when the strangest thing happened. The train ride was around 4 hours and at round 8 or 9 in the evening and I thought it would be a good idea to buy some chips, a drink and cookies. Unfortunately they don’t have bins in trains, so I placed the soy milk carton in the empty chips packet and placed it on the floor under me with the intention to throw it away at the platform later. Just moments after I’d sat back up from putting the packet on the floor I got a mixture of shocked and angry stares from the local Indians sitting around me. One man harshly criticised me in a strong Indian accent, “What are you doing? You can’t litter here, you need to throw it away!”, so I awkwardly picked it back up and decided to just hold it. Not much later the elderly man sitting next to me, gestured at me with an open hand, offering to take my chips packet. Assuming he knew a place to dispose of the packet, I gave it to him. To my bewilderment, he stood up reached over me to and without hesitation he threw the packet out the barred window.
The second moment occurred back in Bangalore, in Electronic City, during a discussion with our beloved Subha and the other colleagues from ELCITA (one of SweepSmart’s partners). This conversation took place after about a month of living in India, when we asked why there are no rubbish bins on the street. If you walk around the streets in Bangalore, you’ll notice bits trash everywhere and every now and then there will be a heap of trash, that ranged from the size of a football to a several single person mattresses stacked on top of each other. The heaps often came accompanied by groups of 2 or 3 cows depending on the size of the heap, scrimmaging through whatever is left. Apparently, someone or a group of people decided that rubbish bins we’re not aesthetically appealing to have on the streets, so all the bins were removed and the heaps are simply reported by the public and collected by the relevant authority.
The two situations were so mind boggling to me, I just can’t grasp how people’s perceptions of waste could be so contradictory. On one hand, waste pickers, scrap dealers and others in the waste industry perceive waste as a valuable source of income, to the extent that some are able identify different types of plastic by feeling and listening. On the other hand, it is something not to be touched or seen and needs to be disposed of immediately or left for someone or something else to deal with. These moments triggered my conviction that we need to change the way we look at waste and no longer see it as a problem but as an opportunity. The immense amount of materials and energy being poured into production, only to be discarded as waste at a later phase, needs to be change. Ideally, if we could look at the materials we use in the production phase and design or manipulate it in such a way that it is still a valuable resource at the end of its use, there are still countless opportunities. In the end, I hope choosing to study materials science and industrial ecology will help me get one step closer to this ideal.
Of course, it’s not all that simple and it basically comes down to transitioning into a circular economy. The book Material Matters by Thomas Rau provides some really interesting insights into the business models and mentality around circular economies, like taking ownership of waste, but that is something for another time.