Living in a green environment should be every human being’s basic right. We should not be forced to survive in a polluted environment. The air that we breathe, the water that we drink, or the food that we eat should all be pure and fresh. Without this, we are looking at a serious degradation of lifespan and living conditions.

Till we started talking about the circular economy, we had always looked at business and the environment as having conflicting interests. But, if we look closely at the unorganised sector, we have had similar businesses running for a long time.

What is amusing is that these businesses, which were looked down upon, are slowly becoming the topic in forums trying to raise awareness about reusing products, or extracting new resources from them, rather than scrapping them. The rational world feels that all forms of waste, whether old clothes, scrap metals, obsolete electronics, or plastics, are to be returned to the economy or used more efficiently.

Our customer from Garifa village in North 24 Parganas has been in the business of buying such waste products and scrap. Khodija Bibi, along with her husband, collects recyclable waste from the local streets, jetties and small businesses and sorts them into categories before selling them to local vendors, who supply them to the respective industries.

Running this business for the last 20 years, Khodija and her husband own the yard where all the scrap is collected, sorted, and packaged for distribution. They seemed to be quite content with the earnings from the business and want to grow in the same line of business. Their son has also decided to join their business.

Do they realise that they are doing the environment a big favour through their enterprise? I do not think they have thought along those lines.

Environmentally and economically, recycling is an extremely effective way of driving consciousness in our society. Metals such as steel, iron, aluminium, and copper can be recycled many times because their metallic properties do not deteriorate with repeated melting and casting. While this is not always the case with plastic and glass, recycling can still help us minimise the negative impact on the environment.

We should have strict guidelines on how we manage our resources, what we make, how we use those products, and what we do with the materials afterwards. Businesses like Khodija Bibi’s need to be incentivised so that more budding entrepreneurs get into them and contribute to the circular economy.