WASTE TO WEALTH, NOT WEALTH TO WASTE
Waste to Wealth has now become the buzzword worldwide as it’s so catchy and relevant too. The world generates over 2 billion tons of municipal solid waste annually and that number is estimated to rise to around 3.4 billion tones by 2050. The ‘Waste-to-Energy’ and Waste Management market in India is set to be over $14bn opportunity by the year 2025. India, which constitutes around 18% of the world population currently generates over 65 million tons of municipal solid waste per year. The Waste to Wealth Mission, spearheaded by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India (O/o PSA), aims at strengthening the waste management system in India by identifying and validating innovative technology solutions and models to achieve a zero landfill and zero waste nation.
But when we see that the mission has just remained a catchy slogan to impress the audience at a conference/seminar or just a photo opportunity, and people in reality, especially in government and the public sector is in fact knowingly or ignorantly turning wealth into waste, it really pains and the very purpose of such a great mission seems getting defeated.
We the Indians have always remained very much enthusiastic about procurement/construction/installation/commissioning of new equipment/projects/things but hardly care about their optimum utilization and efficiency, once they are procured/installed/commissioned/constructed. It has become a common phenomenon that some directives, which are not even well thought comes from the top and every organization starts running to comply that directive within the prescribed timeline by hook or by crook, without giving due cognizance to the quality of the work. In compliance of such ill-conceived dictatorial directives, the works get completed in hurriedness but hardly anyone cares whether the works completed are really effective and aiding value to the Company, Community or Country for which the work was taken. Our system has becomes such a 'YES BOSS TYPE' that nobody even dare to question how the directives can be complied if it is not well conceived. Our country is replete with examples when such works were taken in impetuosity, got completed in haste but are lying ineffective since long due to poor planning and implementation.
Such things are happening everywhere and our organization is not an exception. Our organization has a vast array of huge assets which are worth millions and millions of rupees but when it comes its utilization, we are not the best or even the good ones, if we compare it with the international benchmarks. When we see the capacity utilization of our departmental machines, we find that we are far away even from the capacity utilization of our contractual counterparts and stand nowhere when compared with the international benchmarks.
Why we are not able to achieve optimum utilization of our assets? Why not sense of belongingness comes in us for the assets of our company even after working for it year after years. Are we joining the company just for the single moto of getting cheques for the works we do for it? Why we don’t feel the pain when the hardly earned assets of our company remains unutilized or underutilized, not for few days or months but for year after years. When we give so much care about personal assets and keep on thinking how to utilize them to get the best possible return from those assets than why such feelings don’t come in us for the assets of our company, community or the country?
Waste to Wealth Mission is one of the best Mission, as it envisages to get the best return even from the waste which are generated by us but its significance gets subdued when we found that most of us are in the habit of not giving due cognizance to the wealth which our company already have and keep on turning company’s hard earned wealth into waste due to ignorance or the reasons best known to us. A lot of discussion on asset monetization is going on across the organization and country with a purpose to monetize the unutilized/underutilized resources but achieving optimum utilization of these assets are still a distant dream.
Provisioning and creating assets is not enough, until we are able to make optimum utilization of those assets for the goods of the company, community and the country. Hence, there is an urgent need of introspection that whether we actually want to use our assets, resources and even the generated waste in the most optimal way or we are just happy in playing with the one-liners/ jargons/cliché like ‘waste to wealth’, etc. without understanding the true meaning of the same.
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