Growing with Grace – District Administration, Angul

Building a Culture of Recycling

Problem

• The presence of excessive junk in the market means inefficient utilization of resources as opposed to its maximum life cycle.
• Presence of four different kinds of waste, i.e., Wasted Resources, Wastage Capacities, Wasted Life Cycles & Wasted Embedded Values.
• Absence of circular business model viz. Circular Supply Chain, Recovery and Recycling, Product Life Extension, Sharing Platform and Product as a Service, etc.
• High consumption of natural resources due to emissions and waste generation.
• There is cultural resistance to the idea of reusing and recycling products in India.

Solution

• A Circularity gap study was carried out for the adaptation of the latest methodological frameworks for a comprehensive and biophysical assessment of a circular economy.
• Adopted a comprehensive set of indicators to measure the scale and circularity of total material and waste flows and their socioeconomic and ecological loop closing,
• Developed a road map in different sectors such as Plastic, Electronics, Textiles, Aluminium, Steel, Infrastructure, Water management, etc.
• Design and development of a circular hub and selection of enterprises that will be supported in the uptake of circular business models.
• Development of capacity building strategy for strengthening institutional capacities for designing and implementing actions on RE & CE in the above-mentioned areas.

Outcomes

• Reusing and recycling products would slow down the use of natural resources, reduce landscape and habitat disruption, and help to limit biodiversity loss.
• Sustainable products would help to reduce energy and resource consumption, as more than 80% of a product’s environmental impact is determined during the design phase.
• Recycling raw materials mitigates the risks associated with supply, such as price volatility, availability, and import dependency.
• Consumers will be provided with more durable and innovative products that will increase their quality of life and save them money in the long term.
• Moving towards a more circular economy could increase competitiveness, stimulate innovation, boost economic growth, and create jobs.

Challenges

• Lack of a clear vision toward the end goal of India’s circular economy mission and gaps in the actual implementation of the policies.
• People are not aware of the circular economy and its benefits, making it difficult to gain support for implementing circular economy initiatives.
• India’s infrastructure is not well-suited to support a circular economy as there is a lack of recycling facilities, which makes it difficult to recycle and reuse materials.
• The typical governance challenges faced by GRACE owing to the non-availability of a policy instrument and directive or circular both at the state and central government.
• Lack of incentive structure and institutional capacity to ground the solutions within the prescribed sectors by the task force.

Innovation

• GRACE is being represented at national and international levels as an innovative intervention from local government 
• The breadth and length of partnerships led to solving the typical coordination issues among the stakeholders.
• The organization uses novel ways to attract resources to the project, for e.g., developing a membership model to attract small donations from beneficiaries.
• The organization changed its operational processes and structures to accelerate impact.
• The organization starts working with new and unusual partners such as NGOs/INGO or government agencies to address the shift in approach.

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Case Study

Building a Culture of Recycling 

Summary 

“Growing with GRACE” is an innovative project by the district administration of Angul (and its programme partner UNEP India). The contributions GRACE has made are viz. assessment the circularity gap, study institutional structures through multi- vectoral methods of analysis, representation & validation of circular business/governance models vs business as usual and preparation of a comprehensive sectoral road map/ action plan. 

Problems

There is presence of excessive junk in the market which means inefficient utilization of resources as opposed to its maximum life cycle. The waste can be classified into 4 different categories i.e. Wasted Resources, Wastage Capacities, Wasted Life Cycles & Wasted Embedded Values. There was a need for a circular business model viz. Circular Supply Chain, Recovery and Recycling, Product Life Extension, Sharing Platform and Product as a Service etc. as there is high consumption of natural resources due to emissions and waste generation.

Solutions

A Circularity gap study carried out for adaptation of latest methodological frameworks for a comprehensive and biophysical assessment of a circular economy under which district level circularity gap report was developed. The circularity gap report would included circularity monitoring framework with circularity indicator and the material flow mapping and developed based on adaptation of latest methodological frameworks being widely used for a comprehensive and economy-wide biophysical assessment of a circular economy, including economy-wide material flow accounting as well as assessments of waste flows, recycling, and downcycled materials in each priority sectors.

Outcomes

The circular economy or GRACE established a more sustainable production and consumption model in which raw materials are kept longer in production cycles and can be used repeatedly, therefore generating much less waste. Until now the world has lived with linear production models, in other words, world, extract, produce, consume, and discard. As its name suggests, the essence of this model is that resources are kept in the economy for as long as possible, making it possible to use the waste we generate as raw material for other industries.

Challenges

Main challenges of transitioning to a circular economy may be divided into four main categories: redesigning value chains, aligning circularity with business interests, promoting a “circular behavior”, and designing effective policies. There was a lack of a clear vision towards the end-goal of India’s circular economy mission and gaps in actual implementation of the policies. People are not aware of the circular economy and its benefits and India’s infrastructure is not well-suited to support a circular economy. There is a cultural resistance to the idea of reusing and recycling products in India making it difficult to change consumer behavior and shift towards a circular economy.

Innovation

There are multiple means of approach or implementation of innovative ideas resorted in GRACE.  The project GRACE is a convergence project because of its comprehensive design, diverse-stakeholder participation and zero duplicity. The breadth and length at which partnerships have been made led to solving the typical coordination issues within the stakeholders. GRACE is being represented at national and international level as an innovative intervention from local government .

Opportunities

More solutions to be explored along with more sectors adding up leading scalability and replicable models after a series of pilots thereby informing the policy formulation.

For more information, please contact:
Mr Siddharth Shankar Swain, IAS, Collector & District Magistrate at dmfangul@gmail.com

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