Green Summer Holiday Homework Project: Hydrogen Gas Made Easy

Tuesday, I wrote about the possibility of using hydrogen as a fuel, and I tried to explain things in terms a motivated student in seventh or eighth might understand.  I admit, it was probably hard to follow all the way through, but if you went to the "Bottom Line" at the end of that post, I think my point was clear enough. 

Today, I'm doing a public service to all students looking for an excellent summer holiday homework science project, in case your teacher actually gives you a choice about what kind of project to do!  (If not, maybe you can use it next Earth Day.) (And if you are a teacher, then why not give your students a choice?  They'll learn more if they are investigating something they are curious about, no? Covering the syllabus is not the ultimate goal, it's just a means to an end! Educated, thoughtful students are what we really want, no?)

OK, the first thing you need to do to make an excellent project is to actually think.  Thinking may not give you higher marks, but it is, I believe, often the only difference between an excellent project from an utter and complete waste of time!  If you think, then you will be better off, regardless of your marks--regardless of whether your project works or not!  (Don't forget, science is about learning from failure as much as success!) 

The project I'm suggesting involves how people might--or might not--be able to use hydrogen as clean fuel someday.  I'm going to teach you how to actually make hydrogen gas safely. You can use this demonstration to support your argument that hydrogen is the fuel of the future--or you can use it to support your argument that hydrogen is a really great gas, but is unlikely to amount to much.  Which position you take depends on what you think!

OK, for starters, read my earlier post on hydrogen fuel.  Decide what you think, and state your position clearly: HYDROGEN: FUEL OF THE FUTURE or HYDROGEN, A HUGE WASTE OF MONEY, or even "HYDROGEN: FUTURE FUEL OR WASTE OF MONEY?  It's up to you! 

Whatever you do, take a few notes, and by all means follow the links I thoughtfully provided you. Make up your mind and make a poster that explains your thinking. (Or try a scrapbook, which my 12 year old finds easier.  It depends on the kind of presentation your teacher prefers.  Yes, pleasing your teacher will not make you smarter, but it doesn't hurt, does it?)  

As you explain your thinking, remember: a little bit of data goes a long way to support an argument. In science, especially, it's not enough to say, "I believe it, so it's true!"  But do yourself a favour, and don't use me as the source of your great data.  It's not that the Green Light Dhaba is unreliable; we are very reliable.  But, think about it--who is your teacher going to find more trustworthy--an on-line dhaba or a magazine with a name like New Scientist or Popular Mechanics?  Don't worry, follow the links provided and cite those as your sources--it won't hurt my feelings!

One more thing--use personal, local examples.  True stories from your own life can provide effective support to your argument. And personal connections should not be too hard to make regarding hydrogen.  Remember: hydrogen is a gas;  CNG is a gas...LPG is a gas!  Will our autos run on hydrogen some day?  Will we cook with it?  Cut out a photo of a cooking cylinder or a CNG powered bus or one of Delhi's green and yellow autorickshaws--you can find one every day or two in most Delhi papers.  If you don't live in Delhi, you can use the one on the right I took a few months back--don't worry, you have my permission!

Now for the real exciting bit.  Watch this video and learn how to safely make hydrogen gas.  If you work at it, you might even be able to fill a balloon with hydrogen gas, though this video does not show that.  The great thing about a hydrogen-filled balloon is that hydrogen is lighter than air, so it will float and this might get you high marks and the respect of your classmates.  However, beware!  Hydrogen will burn, which is why we don't use it in lighter than air flying machines--remember the Hindenburg?  Maybe it's better to stick with just making bubbles.

Now remember that this demonstration proves that hydrogen is not so hard to make--but it also shows that you need to use energy to get hydrogen from water!  There are, by the way, plenty of scams out there that purport to show how you can run an automobile on water and other such things. This site bursts some of those myths and is worth taking a look at. This demonstration can be used to argue several different points--and your teacher will like it because it's "hands on." Remember to bring an extra cell to school on the day you present it.  How embarrassing to run out of fuel!

By the way, if someone tells you how to make hydrogen by using sodium hydroxide, aluminum and water, please don't do it unless you have safety equipment and the help of an adult who knows what she or he is doing. This method of hydrogen production can be dangerous and your teacher may actually punish you for doing it.  Not to mention, it generates a lot of heat and involves extremely caustic chemicals and flammable gas--a bad combination all around. (Trust me on this, please, but if you don't, and need a reminder of the possible consequences, you can read this.)

Now you are ready to impress your teacher and your friends.  If you have more summer holiday homework questions, feel free to write the Green Light Dhaba any time: you can post a comment, or write us here. But I need a few days to reply; don't expect me to rescue you at the last minute!

Homework Helper: Hydrogen Fuel for 12 year olds

I'm a bit cynical about Earth Day school projects. Too often it seems like children just "go through the motions"  and turn in something because it's required. For example, this year my 12 year old son asked his his little brother what to do for his Earth Day Poster. "It's not for marks, but I have to turn something in tomorrow." 

His brother responded by saying, "Oh, that's easy, just draw a big earth, add legs, arms and a mouth, and have him say something like, 'protect the earth, we only have one!'"  Working together, they had the job done about 15 minutes. While I appreciated the brotherly love, the obvious lack of real thought tended to confirm my doubts about Earth Day projects.

A few days later, my 12 year old started asking me to explain how hydrogen might be used as a fuel in the future.  I put him off (kindly) a few times, before I realized he was really interested. When I asked him how he became curious about hydrogen fuel, he said, "Some kid made an interesting Earth Day poster about how we might be able to use algae to get hydrogen to power all kinds of things."  Wow! Maybe those posters are worth doing after all!

OK, so here's my best shot at a seventh standard explanation of the "hydrogen economy" some people like to talk about endlessly.  On Thursday, I'll explain how you can use this post to put together a really great summer holiday homework or Earth Day project. (It's up now, here!)  (If you are actually in seventh standard and find the reading is difficult, don't be discouraged!  The trick to reading hard stuff is to realize nobody understands everything they read--just keep working at it and try to get to the end, where I summarize things simply.)  For those who want more details, or want to check my sources, just follow the embedded links.

Hydrogen is the simplest element in the world--no the universe!  The sun and stars, for example, are mostly made of hydrogen.

Hydrogen is just one proton and one electron--see the diagram to the right.  Hydrogen contains a lot of energy, but it produces almost no pollution when it burns.  Liquid hydrogen is so powerful, it can be used to send rockets into space!  (The sun, by the way, does not burn hydrogen like this; the sun gets it's power from different process which we call nuclear fusion.  This is what powers hydrogen bombs. Unfortunately, we are a long way from figuring how to make nuclear fusion safe and cheap. Nuclear fusion, by the way is not the same as nuclear fission, which powers nuclear power plants and some atomic bombs. )

It's pretty easy to burn hydrogen.  When we do that, hydrogen combines with oxygen and gives us heat and water.  In addition to burning hydrogen, you can also get energy from it by using something called a fuel cell.  In a fuel cell, hydrogen combines with oxygen to produce electricity, heat, clean water, and almost no pollution.  Even now, fuel cells can produce useful electricity and power motor vehicles.  To create electricity, fuel cells require something called a catalyst, which we'll discuss below in a different context.

So hydrogen is plentiful, clean, and it can power our automobiles and our electrical appliances.  What more could we ask for?  Unfortunately, there are major problems that need to be solved before we can enter a Utopian "hydrogen economy," where we depend on clean-burning hydrogen instead of fossil fuels. We can group these problems into four categories: Production; Storage and Distribution; and Use. These problems are so major that we need to ask ourselves not just, "Is large scale use of hydrogen possible?" but also, "Is it worth it?"  These are important questions to ask whenever we consider technological "fixes." They are especially important when it comes to hydrogen fuel, because converting to a hydrogen economy would be extraordinarily expensive.  So it's not something we want to do unless the benefits are very high! 

Let's look at each group of problems in turn:

Production
If the world contained massive amounts of cheap hydrogen, we'd already have a hydrogen economy!  The problem is that hydrogen is plentiful, but in it's natural state it's almost always combined with other kinds of molecules--water, for example, is just hydrogen and oxygen!  Unfortunately, to produce usable hydrogen--to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water, for example--you have to use lots of energy. This means we can't really look at hydrogen as an energy source, since you have to use so much energy to get it. Hydrogen is more like a way to store energy, or an energy carrier. 

Right now, most hydrogen comes from adding heat to natural gas.  This is the cheapest way to get hydrogen.  Unfortunately, this process emits lots of  greenhouse gases, which cause global warming.  You can also get hydrogen by adding electricity to water (electrolysis), which splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen.  In addition to electricity, you need something called a catalyst.  Catalysts are materials that speed up chemical reactions. Currently, platinum is the catalyst most often used to produce hydrogen gas from water and electricity.  That's a problem, because there isn't enough platinum in the world to support a world hydrogen economy--and platinum is expensive even now.  The good news is that scientists are developing new, cheaper catalysts. 

Assuming we find a cheap enough catalyst, electrolysis would be an environmentally friendly way to produce hydrogen fuel as long as the source of electricity comes from sustainable sources, such as solar or wind power.  But we can't even generate enough sustainable electricity to run our light bulbs--we've got a lot of work to do before we'll be able to produce usable hydrogen as well!  Increasing our capacity to generate electricity sustainably makes sense, but it's going to take time.

Scientists have found that under certain conditions, algae can produce hydrogen gas.  Right now, this process is too expensive to be cost effective, but many hope this will change. Currently, scientists are developing strains of mutant algae that more efficiently use photosynthesis to break down water into oxygen and hydrogen.  Sounds a little scary, but who knows?  It just might work. 

There are other ways of producing hydrogen; these include the next generation nuclear power plants and liquefied coal. These methods have advantages and disadvantages.  (Mostly disadvantages, if you ask me, but I won't go into the details of dirty mining and nuclear power here.)  Some say we should use coal and natural gas to produce hydrogen until we can figure out more sustainable methods.  Or they say we can figure out a way to capture the carbon produced and sequester, or store, it permanently someplace. This is possible, but coal companies will never invest the money it would take to sequester carbon unless they were forced to do so--and governments don't want to do that, because high energy prices are not popular.  (For an interesting article on this, read this post and this one at Rapid Uplift.  The author is a scientist, so you can quote him!)

Unless we can figure out how to produce hydrogen sustainably, I'm not sure it really makes sense to invest billions of dollars in what it takes to store, distribute, and use hydrogen. Let's look at those problems next.

Storage and Distribution
Hydrogen is tricky stuff to store and transport.  But the problems here are not insurmountable, just expensive.  Advocates of natural gas use in the US argue that natural gas fueling stations can eventually be converted to hydrogen fueling stations.  This does seem to be a strong argument for expansion of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) infrastructure, since CNG is cheaper and produces fewer emissions than petrol and diesel anyway.  But let's not forget that CNG powered automobiles are not sustainable in the long run, because even if they are better than petrol or diesel vehicles, they do produce greenhouse gases.  This is especially true if people use cars to to the extent that they do in the US--or New Delhi.  To its credit, Delhi has been using CNG to power buses and autorickshaws for years, and it did lead to less pollution--at least until the number of private diesel vehicles drastically increased.

Moving hydrogen from one place to another (distribution) is problematic, because it takes a lot of energy to transport it by truck or train.  That leads to inefficiencies--and higher emissions.  In the long run, pipelines are the cheapest way to transport hydrogen.  The problem is, pipelines are expensive because they need to be specially treated; currently in the US, every 10 km of pipeline costs over six million dollars to build.  That's not cheap.

One solution to the transport problem is the produce hydrogen locally--at or near the filling station.  So far, most efforts to do this have involved natural gas, which means carbon emissions.  If that's the best we can do, it might make sense to drive less and use natural gas directly!

Use
As noted above, there are many ways we can use hydrogen.  Fuel cell vehicles, power generation, and rocket ship travel are three! Right now, hydrogen powered cars are very expensive, but those costs will come down with improved technology.  Large scale electricity generation from hydrogen probably doesn't make much sense unless we can figure out how to use algae to produce hydrogen cheaply.  That may or may not happen.  As for rocket ship travel, I wouldn't count on that becoming sustainable in our life time!

For a good overview of the costs associated with the different parts of the "hydrogen economy," take a look at this article in Popular Mechanics.

Bottom Line:
If we can come up with a cheap, sustainable way to produce hydrogen, it could solve a lot of our current energy problems.  I support basic research for this reason.  Failing that, it probably makes more sense to keep things simple: use solar and wind power to run light bulbs and to heat water; encourage bicycle use; replace automobiles with trains and natural gas buses; that kind of thing. The good news is that at least some of the infrastructure we use to store and distribute natural gas could eventually be converted for hydrogen use.  So if we develop a cheap, sustainable source of hydrogen, the investment we put into fleets of natural gas powered buses won't be a complete waste.  Given that, a go-slow approach doesn't close any doors.

What doesn't make sense is to invent a massively expensive infrastructure to make our unsustainable use of automobiles slightly less unsustainable.  My advice to seventh standard students?  Don't count on hydrogen to solve your future problems, but if you're passionate about science, this is one area where bright minds are required!

Commonwealth Games 2010: Considering the Costs

The chairman of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee has declared, "The games won't cost the country a penny," but that hasn't stopped the the Delhi government  from raising our taxes to pay for them.  You see, nothing in life comes without a cost--and the Commonwealth Games are no exception to that rule.  

Sometimes you have to laugh at all the things that are justified in the name of these games.  Because of the CWG, we'll soon be able to buy liquor in fancy malls, but we may be sent to jail and fined Rs. 50,000 if we are caught drinking in public.    Our street vendors--at least those visible to tourists--have been promised state-of-the-art, solar powered carts but we've all been asked to stop spitting and urinating on public roads.  Oh well, all good things require sacrifices!

On a more serious note, we have  a new metro, thousands of new buses and dozens of new flyovers, but nitrogen dioxide levels are exceeding prescribed limits, and the idea that Delhi might be "pollution free by 2010"--something we heard our leadership say as recently as 2007, seems like a bad joke.  And it's not just the air: if the Yamuna is not fully dead, it's at least dying--and 80% of what is is killing it originates in Delhi.  That's not surprising, given that about 45 percent of Delhi's population is not connected to the sewage system.  The fact that the Commonwealth Games Village  is built on the flood plain of the Yamuna is unlikely to help this situation, though we have heard endless talk about how  those facilities have been designed to conserve water. Unfortunately, the rest of Delhi is not doing so well: we currently waste about  half the clean water we get.


On the human front, the Delhi government is investing in biometric machines to help crack down on people convicted of begging, but it won't force contractors who take public money to pay the required minimum wage to their workers, and it tolerates child labor on public construction sites.  Apparently, we are unwilling to go after contractors who take public money and then steal from their own workers, but we have plenty of funds to punish poor people who annoy middle class residents and tourists by begging on street corners.  (As usual, it seems the price you pay is inversely related to the depth of your pockets.)

Yes, a lot has been done in the name of the Commonwealth Games.  We are becoming a World Class City.  But the cost has been high indeed.  Exactly how high is hard to say.  Some estimates put the budget for the games alone, excluding non-sports related infrastructure, at about 1.6 billion dollars, which would make it the most expensive CWG in history.   In a recent "Telhelka Avenues" advertisement, the Delhi government claimed to have spent over 17.5 billion dollars in games-related projects and infrastructure.  (That's where the flyovers, anti-begging biometric machines, and liquor stores come in, I suspect). Of course any city will collapse if it fails to invest in infrastructure, and it would be silly to say that all of that money was wasted--much of it was well spent.


I suspect the real cost of the games cannot be measured in dollars or rupees.  Perhaps the real price we've paid has had something to do with our willingness to publicly embrace a  perversion that has long been present in our priorities:  the CWG have served as an excuse to put off spending on things like schools, housing and clean water, and to invest instead in things the urban middle and upper classes seem to value most--transportation, unsustainable consumption, and projects that make our city look good to outsiders.

Let's hope that once the games are over, we will hear less about flyovers, fancy liquor stores and  airports that  meet "international standards." Instead, let's talk about a city that strives to provide clean water, decent housing and "word class" schools to all. Those things will cost money--a lot of it--but they won't require excuses!

Activist Alert: Independent People's Tribunal on Land Aquisition, Resource Grab and Operation Green Hunt

Whatever your feeling about the Maoists--or about Arundhati Roy's recent story in Outlook--it seems clear that this problem has reached the attention of the central government and urban elite in large part because there are all kinds of valuable resources in many of the the places where the Maoists are active. And I'm not talking about pristine streams, tiger habitats, or idyllic villages full of people living sustainably. I am not talking about trees or the stuff that grows on trees, but the stuff that lies under the trees-- the stuff you need if you want to make iron and steel and aluminum. The stuff India Inc. is dying to get it's hands on.  The stuff  that is required to sustain the unsustainable way of life many of us are living in Delhi and the other mega-cities.

What happens when government-backed corporations encounter people living on valuable resources? It's an old story and it usually ends badly for the people and the earth land they  inhabit.  In the past, governments from across the political spectrum justified destroying the land in the name of development.  But there's a problem: unsustainable development is...unsustainable, which means in the long run, or even the medium run, it is bad for everyone!  All those new cars you see on the road, those new shopping malls and the expensive stuff you see inside them?  A large part of all that is made from metals that were mined from places that used to be forests.

With or without Maoists, mining is a dirty, ugly business. We probably can't stop doing it completely--a modern sustainable, just society will require some metal, even if we use much less and recycle like we should.  But destroying forests, mining metal and running factories just to produce throw-away consumer goods for the richest of the rich is not helping anything.  It will result in jobs for a few years, maybe even decades, but in the end that road leads to nowhere but disaster--when oil prices spike, when wells and rivers run dry and the monsoons don't come, malls and big cars won't power our homes, they won't irrigate our fields!  Better to put people to work in industries that build things we really need: efficient, affordable housing, solar and wind power plants, water harvesting projects, etc. 

An alliance of civil society groups, including the Indian Youth Climate Network, is shining some light on this issue.  They are putting together an Independent People's Tribunal (IPT).   IPT's are a way for civil society groups to present an issue of public concern before an impartial and eminent group of jury members, whose report on the subject is useful in educating and informing and mobilizing public opinion.  Here is the basic information:

INDEPENDENT PEOPLE’S TRIBUNAL

on Land Acquisition, Resource Grab and Operation Green Hunt 

9-11 April 2010, 

Speaker’s Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi

For more information go here.

More Water: The Story of Bottled Water and a Photo Essay from National Geographic

I was just beginning a really interesting post on the Commonwealth Games--how much it's costing, what it's good for, that kind of thing, when I came down with a stomach bug! Nothing serious, but Yuck--and it's left my mind incapable of much original thought.  But never fear, I've got a solution:  since Monday was World Water Day, let me show you two things about water that you'll want to see.

First, take a look at National Geographic's amazing photo essay on water.

Next, check out Annie Leonard's latest contribution to the Story of Stuff Project: The Story of Bottled Water.

Like The Story of Stuff and The Story of Cap and Trade, The Story of Bottled Water lays things out simply.  It is aimed at an American audience, and I'd like to see Leonard give India's plastic recycling industry a more thoughtful and sympathetic look than she does here, but if you're trying to produce something that runs just over 8 minutes, then I guess you have to make some hard calls.  All in all, it's worth watching.

Oh and speaking of water, I was recently reminded of the hack job that Open Magazine ran a couple months back.  They recycled press releases and sound bites from right wing American think tanks and well known climate skeptics and made a lot of outrageous claims.  I documented some of that here and some over on their site, here.  Anyway, one of the many bits of good news Open delivered was this: "Another total lie has been that the Sunderbans in Bangladesh are sinking on account of the rise in sea level."  The only problem is, that the sea level is rising--in fact, it just swallowed a small island in the Bay of Bengal. 

None of us want to think our children's future is in peril; climate deniers are selling a story we all want to believe in: don't worry, it will all be fine.   Even I want to believe that story--even I want to be able to say that to my children.  But the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence suggests we have a great deal to worry about--and that everything will not be fine, not for a very long time, even if we take strong action now.  And if we don't take strong action? Let's save that story for another day.

World Water Day Special: Delhi's Nallahs

Today is World Water Day, so we're bringing you a photo essay on the nallahs, or drains, that carry a mix of natural run-off, sewage, and industrial waste through the center of Delhi, and out into the Yamuna.

Something like 45 percent of Delhi's population is not connected to the municipal sewer system.  Many of Delh's slums, as well as urban villages such as Chirag Dilli, Shahpur Jat, and Kotla, dump at least some of their waste water and sewage straight into these nallahs.  On average, more than half of the sewage that pours into the Yamuna is untreated.

Though they have grown in size with Delhi's population, many nallahs were originally small, natural streams.  In spite of their smell, nallahs still look beautiful in many places. And the small temples you will find on the banks of many nallahs suggests a time when these areas were something other than what they are now.

 

In other places, nallahs are choked with trash.

Many colonies feel the answer to the problem is to simply cover the nallah.  Defense Colony is covering it's nallah right now.  There is a lot of money in this kind of project.  This nallah....

...used to looked like this:

Covered nallahs make room for roads, even parks.  This was once the site of a nallah:

Some worry that covered nallahs will be prone to blockages and water logging. Who cleans  plugged nallahs?  How do they do it? Others ask what will happen to all the people who live on the banks of the nallahs, if we cover them all. For some it would likely mean losing their homes.

  Others might find it an improvement.

 

Of course, simply covering the nallahs will not clean them!  I once found myself at a late-night party, drinking whiskey with a well known architect and urban planner.  I told him that a large park near my flat has built a small, low-tech facility that cleans water from the local nallah enough to use it for irrigation.  He said that was nice, but much more would be required. He went on to tell me emphatically that any effort to clean the nallahs with one or two high-tech, mega treatment plants would also fail, though efforts like this would no doubt put many happy contractors in a generous mood.  He suggested that the best solution would involve a long canal along the side of the Yamuna, with small treatment plants every few kilometers.  It would not look as impressive as a mega treatment plant, but it would be better suited to get the job done.  

Of course, we could have scrapped the Commonwealth Games and put all that money into a vastly expanded sewer system that might help us to reclaim our nallahs as urban green spaces.  Cycle paths could run along side cleaned-up nallahs.  But given the fact that Delhi is wasting something like half of our clean water, in spite of all those huge Delhi Jal Board pipes we've been seeing all over the place, this hardly seems likely. 

Most likely it will take a combination of small and large approaches to solve this problem. It is hard to imagine a solution to our water problems that does not involve the nallahs.    And without a solution to our water problems, far too many people will continue to die of diarrhea.

I live a hundred meters from a nallah, and sometimes in the summer, when the wind blows the wrong way, I fall asleep dreaming of sewer.  But I can't help it, I like nallahs.  Maybe it's because they are such a striking collision of nature and modernity.  Maybe it's because, when the wind is blowing the right way, there is nothing more beautiful in Delhi than a nallah, at the hour when the campfires come out.

Horns and Helmets: Photos Prove We Need Legally Binding, Enforceable Climate Agreements

Don't forget to sign the on-line petitions against the BRAI Bill and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill.  Find out more here.

The Hindu ran a front page exclusive a week or so back, headlined: India stops U.S. attempt to sneak “scrutiny” into climate talks.   It sounded pretty good.  Unfortunately, the truth was not so impressive. But it was instructive. Let me explain.    

The Copenhagen fiasco basically set up a system where countries may voluntarily make commitments to do whatever they feel they can do.  These commitments are non-binding, and the extent to which countries choose to honor them is not even open to international "scrutiny." They are, however, open to the more ambiguous-sounding "consultations and analysis." Recently, the US had tried to substitute the "s" word for the term "consultations and analysis".The US backed off when India's Environment Minister Ramesh shot off an email to American negotiator Todd Stern.  

Now let me be clear: I love to see Todd Stern back off!  We took him to task way back in December, on the day we correctly predicted the outcome of Copenhagan talks. Here's what we said then:

US spokesperson Todd Stern is always saying obnoxious things about the developing world, suggesting WE are not doing enough.  For example, he says we won't get a "pass" this time, that "you've just got to do the math"...Americans like to "get tough" on abstract nouns.  They are always getting  tough on things like crime, "terror", immigration and drugs.   Stern's talk is part of his effort to prove America is ready to get tough on China and India...  

But the real problem here is that this is all an act.  The Americans want to look like they are getting tough on us.  We want to look like we are getting tough on them.  But nobody is likely to do very much because nobody has to!


That's why I'm going to say something that a lot of people won't like: at the end of the day, if we want to get anything done, we'll all need to accept words even stronger than "scrutiny"-- words like "legally binding" and "enforceable."  Of course, when it comes to carbon pollution, the US will have to cut much, much more, because they use much, much more--and they should pay for the share of historic pollution they've created. But at the very least, India will have to agree to reasonable cuts in emissions intensity  (explained here). 


Here is my simple, two-part part argument for why only legally binding, enforceable agreemets will work if we want to cut pollution.  You can sum it up with two words: horns and helmets.


Exhibit A: Horns 
In Delhi, some people love horns, some people hate them.  But we all hear a lot of them!  So an clever NGO has put together a great campaign of signs with slogans like these:  "Shut Up Honking...Even dogs don't bark without a reason...Horn blowing is a sickness..." These signs are smart and funny and kids like them.  There's only one problem.  They don't seem to stop anyone from blowing their horn! Conclusion: clever things that are not legally binding are not likely to work--at least not very quickly.

 

Exhibit B: Helmets

In Delhi, a very high percentage of motor cycle drivers wear helmets.  I would like to tell you they wear them because they believe in the safety benefits of the helmets.  But in most cases, this is not true.  How do I know? Well, because I've talk to a lot of people.  They say they wear a helmet to avoid being fined.  As additional proof, I submit to you these photos which demonstrate that people who are not required to wear helmets, such as women and children riding as passengers, typically do not wear them!  Now if the fathers and husbands riding these bikes believed in the life-saving properties of helmets, many of them would undoubtedly convince their wives and children to wear them.  But they don't. Conclusion: people are more likely to change their behavior when they are required to by legally binding, enforceable laws.

 

Summing up: legally binding, enforceable laws work, my friends!  Cool signs do not!

Interview: Economist and Author Kaveri Gill

On Tuesday, we reviewed Kaveri Gill's book, Of Poverty and Plastic. Gill uses an interdisciplinary approach to poverty analysis in the Indian plastic recycling industry.  In the process, she gives us important insights into the ways in which poverty, development and the environment interact in urban India. You can read our review here; we think that Of Poverty and Plastic is a rigorous, ambitious book that will be appreciated by both activists and academics alike.  Today, we are pleased to follow up our review with an interview with the author.

Tell us how you became interested in plastic recycling in the first place. 

Well, more than plastic recycling, as an economist I have always been interested in poverty and employment / labour markets. And in fact, that remains the key focus of the book, as suggested by the title, which alludes to Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' and its themes of poverty during the Depression, migrant workers, and their dreams of a better life. Informal plastic recycling, as one of many informal sectors, provides a 'free' livelihood to lots of migrants to the city in the context of liberalisation , and I was struck by the great irony of these people - especially those at the lowest levels of the chain - not passively accepting of their poverty and expecting handouts, but instead exerting great agency through a market to better their lot in life, even as they contribute to the greening of the city. And yet they come up against an unhelpful state, and prejudiced judiciary and civil society.  

Your book is based on interviews, surveys and focus groups conducted in slums and markets where many of Delhi's plastic workers live and work . Can you tell us a little about that experience? Any moments or lessons that stand out for you in particular?

Well, I spent more than fifteen months at a stretch in the slums of Jwalapuri and the Mundka recycling market, a decade ago now.....and have returned regularly since. During this time, I have made good friends, and really seen the view from the other side. The thing that struck me most, and remains with me, is how the opposite of powerless and passive these people are in accepting the deal handed out to them by life. As development economists and specialists, we spend our lives hearing about the importance of the poor 'exerting agency and voice'. And that is exactly what these people have painfully wrested for themselves. In a context where they are given no security and certainty about the legality of their slum plots, are rarely the recipients of regular service delivery of water or electricity -- ironically, they are underserved by the municipality as regards solid waste management and are instead themselves the free providers of the same! -- have no access to the formal labour market or any social security from the state, they have managed to painfully negotiate all of the above through creating this informal sector work, and establishing hegemony over it, thus gaining some measure of economic and political power. This they use to overcome the social stigma they face on the ground of their doing 'polluting' work, in a ritual as opposed to environmental, sense!  

You argue that middle class urban environmentalists tend to privilege “green agenda” issues like climate change and biodiversity over what what you call “brown agenda” issues like safe water, sanitation and housing. Do you see these agendas as exclusive, or is their room for common ground?  

Well, I don't see the 'green' and 'brown' agenda as mutually exclusive. By all means, let the middle classes be concerned with both! But in privileging the former over the latter, we are in danger of internally reflecting the developed country / developing country hierarchy and divide so clearly in evidence at Copenhagen. Our elites and expanding middle classes cannot wish away the 50% of the other half forming our largest metropolitan cities, like Mumbai and Delhi. And unless we take their basic needs -- housing, safe water, sanitation -- into account as a matter of priority, even as we increase our own conspicuous consumption, we are setting ourselves up for great inequality and trouble.  

Your portrayal of waste pickers and the small godown owners for whom they work is complex, but you seem to agree that society could do better by them. Given extremely low margins of profit in this commodity chain, is it possible to imagine an effective system of plastic recycling that provided these workers with a better standard of living?

Yes, first, the state and judiciary and civil society shouldn't hinder the work they are doing. If we can't help them, leave them alone - but don't create unnecessary obstacles and hurdles by banning the recycling (again, great irony but no surprises there, we have never considered banning the primary production and consumption, which would solve the environmental problem far more effectively!), by requiring they fulfill expensive regulatory requirements which would render this low value added industry economically unviable (like printing recycled content and polymer type on each product, which even the primary industry is not yet enforced to do, as it is in industrialised countries!)

If we want to help them improve their standard of living, then there are means -- give them technological aid; make banking and microfinance loans available to them etc.

You point out that lion's share of the job growth that has occurred in the past 20 years has occurred in the informal sector. You seem ambivalent about this. On the one hand, the informal sector has been the source of a lot of innovation in areas like plastic recycling; and in many cases it does the work the state seem incapable of doing. On the other hand, informal sector work offers little security, and often reinforces the "hard bar" of caste. Do you see a way out of this? 

Let me be clear about my position on the informal sector. The reality is, it accounts for 93% of the labour force in our country at present. In an ideal world, it would be far less and many more would have formal sector employment, with social security and other benefits. But we are far from that point. In the meantime, none of my informal waste worker groups fall below the official state poverty line for Delhi, not even the waste pickers working on dumps. This is perhaps the most key finding of my book, yet it has been overlooked by many. This means they are not eligible for any handouts from the state. It is against this backdrop, and in this context, that they are delivered to the doors of the informal plastic recycling 'market' to survive and make a living for themselves. To take that away from them without offering a viable alternative is to consign them to the life of even greater destitution. Of course, one hopes in the long run, as the economy grows and develops, and more numbers are able to participate and benefit from an inclusive economy, this kind of work dies a natural death, as it did in post-industrial societies of the west. In the meantime, let them survive through an independent, and in it's own way, dignified employment and market opportunity. 

To find find out more about Of Poverty and Plastic see  review from Tuesday.  There you will also find out how you can enter our contest to win a free (and well-used) copy of the book--but hurry, you've got less than two weeks!  Want a brand new copy?  Here are the links you need:

Buy Of Poverty and Plastic in India from Flipkart

Buy Of Poverty and Plastic in the USA from Oxford University Press

Buy Of Poverty and Plastic in the UK from Amazon

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Don't forget to celebrate to India's refusal to allow Bt Brinjal into the country!  If it hadn't been for the thousands and thousands of people who marched, testified, fasted and petitioned, the outcome would have almost certainly been different.  Hats off to the people who worked so hard to make this victory possible.

Reviewed: Of Poverty and Plastic

Of Poverty and Plastic

by Kaveri Gill

Oxford University Press (2010)

Four and a Half Green Stars (excellent)

A few years back, my son, who was then in Class III, was told by his teacher to write an essay on a "real-life hero.”  With no input form me, he chose to write about the kabadi walla, because “the kabadi walla helps us all recycle.”  One winter evening, we wandered through a south Delhi scrap market, interviewing itinerant buyers and the owners of small godowns who were just finishing their day’s work.  I think it was probably one of my finer moments as a father, and I've always been proud of my son for being willing to go into such unfamiliar territory.

That experience sparked my interest in Delhi’s solid waste management system, which seems to be badly broken in some ways and extremely effective in others.  So last month when I saw Kaveri Gill’s book, Of Poverty and Plastic, I couldn’t resist buying it, in spite of it’s relatively steep price tag.

I was not disappointed.  Gill’s book is ambitious, engaging and meticulously researched.  It reveals much about what is wrong –and right—not just with India’s solid waste management system, but with our post-liberalization economy as well.  This is not an easy read: it is an academic monograph, and as such it is concerned with issues of theory and methodology that the lay reader may find challenging.  But for those who work on issues related to poverty, development, waste management or recycling, this book will be worth the effort it requires.

Gill did her research in slums where plastic workers live, and in the markets where they work.  She draws her conclusions from a mix of quantitative household survey data and qualitative material gathered from focus groups and interviews.  Gill accepts the idea made popular by Amartya Sen that a real measure of poverty must look at much more than just income.  But she points out that this “capability approach” presents researchers with many problems when they set out to measure and compare poverty levels within and across countries. While Gill does not claim to answer every question she raises, she does manage to present us with a compelling picture of work and life in Delhi’s plastic industry.

This isn’t the place for an exhaustive discussion of her conclusions, but there are a few lessons that stand out.  Regarding poverty and development, it is true that the kabadi wallas, the itinerant buyers who buy and collect dry recyclable scrap, do better overall than waste pickers, who collect plastic from trash and “wet waste.”  But Gill finds that when one uses the government's poverty criteria as a measuring stick, no group of workers in the Delhi plastic industry, including waste pickers, qualifies as “poor.”  Given the work waste pickers do, and the conditions they live in, this finding suggests there may be something wrong with how the government measures poverty.

Gill finds that, overall,  workers in the informal plastic industry do somewhat better in terms of income than other informal sector workers living in the same slums.  And if anything, the plastic industry is more equal in terms of income distribution than many other informal sector industries. It is thus not possible to blame the poor conditions of waste pickers on super-exploitative middle men.  Careful analysis reveals that there is simply very little money to be made in this system, and that the owners of the plastic godowns are, like those who work for them, limited in both power and life choices.  Scavengers and godown owners alike understand that their lack of social mobility results, in large part, from the “hard bar” of caste oppression which continues to exist in urban India.

It is interesting to note that most post-liberalization job growth has occurred in the informal sector; this has reduced the access many of the most oppressed workers once had to formal jobs in the industrial and government sectors.  This dynamic—growth based on high wage jobs for a very few, well-educated members of the elite, and informal subsistence wage jobs for the rest—raises important questions about the model of development we’ve been following for nearly two decades now.

Turning to environmental issues, the book makes clear that India does an exceptional job recycling plastic: 60-80% of post consumer plastic is recycled here, as opposed to 7% in Europe and 10% in China.  This should be celebrated, Gill argues, because instead of dumping our used plastic in landfills, we now turn it into cheap buckets and new shoes.   Certainly the workers at the lowest levels of this industry deserve more respect and support from government and society at large.  But Gill also argues that by the logic of capitalism, those who are at the highest level of this industry are not the villains they are often made out to be.  Gill suggests they have played a vital social function by inventing--at considerable financial risk--new techniques and markets for environmentally friendly products.  Gill argues that they are entrepreneurs in the best sense of the word.

However, rather than celebrate this industry, too often elite groups and even middle class environmentalists endorse policies that do the opposite.  Gill looks at the mostly unsuccessful drive to ban plastic bags in Delhi in 2000 and asks why it was aimed primarily at recycled plastic. Gill argues that this was true in part because middle class environmentalists in India, as in the West, tends to privilege “green agenda” issues like climate change and biodiversity over what she calls “brown agenda” issues like safe water, sanitation and housing. But one can't just blame the environmentalists.  To some extent, Gill suggests, the ban the bag movement of a decade ago was hi-jacked by elite interests that were interested less in “green” or “brown” issues and more in making the city look “world class” by removing (or moving) unsightly plastic litter, slums and factories.

Like many of us, Gill sees the problems in the system as it exists, but isn’t sure exactly what to do about them in the long run.  Modern market economies are full of problems, she seems to say, but they are a reality we have to live with.  Our post liberalization market economy, in particular, is producing unequal growth and is distorted by many things, including continuing caste oppression. Gill doesn’t tell us how to remake, or "recycle" this system.  But she does a great deal to help us understand it.  For academics and activists alike, this book and the questions it raises are well worth engaging with.

Buy Of Poverty and Plastic in India from Flipkart

Buy Of Poverty and Plastic in the USA from Oxford University Press

Buy Of Poverty and Plastic in the UK from Amazon

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It's really difficult for me to do this, because I love to hold onto books once I've read them.  But because Of Poverty and Plastic is about recycling, among other things, I'm going to offer my used copy (full of my pencil marks) as a prize to the person who writes me the most compelling email explaining why they just have to read it.   Send it here: haribatti123@gmail.com

I'll get a panel of eminent people together to judge the entries.  Let's make the deadline two weeks from today.

We'll be spending the rest of this week talking trash.  On Thursday, we'll follow up this review with an interview with the author, Kaveri Gill.  On Saturday, we'll have all kinds of trashy links.

Delhi's Water Woes: Is this the best way?

We’d just attended a book launch at Delhi’s Foreign Correspondents' Club, and I’d had my share of rum, cake and paneer tikka.  I was feeling good, but as we searched for an auto, I wished I’d worn a sweater under my light coat; during the summer months, we long for the winter, but in December when weather blows in from the north, Delhi nights can be hard.

Like a lot of Delhi streets, the service lane on Mathura Road is being dug up to make way for new water pipes.  As an environmentalist, I know this is an inconvenient but necessary fact of life.  Today's Hindu reminds us of how much water we are loosing due to our lack of good water infrastructure.  As things stand, far too people have access to piped water at all, and as Delhi expands, this problem will only increase.   Good infrastructure improves our city's quality of life and minimizes waste.  It is money well spent.

As we approached the long ditch, we saw two workers, bathing at the side of the road. Yes, we see working men bathe outside every day in Delhi.  But to see it at 9:30 PM on a cold night like that made me angry.  When US officials talk tough with India and China about our climate change commitments, do they understand how it is that our our per capita carbon emissions are so terribly low already?  It’s not because of efficient power plants--we have few of those.  It's certainly not because our rich and powerful believe in austerity, either.   It’s because millions of working men and women bathe in the cold, live outside throughout the winter. 
 
We walked by silently.  After a time, my friend said, “Well, it’s probably not as cold as the water we get from our tank at home.”  What could I say?  We both knew it was just a polite way to avoid more uncomfortable questions.

Is this the best way we can build our tall buildings?

Is this the best way we can lay our good pipes?