Indian Railways set to take a green turn with green trays and bowls

Indian Railways is one of the world’s largest public transporters with more than 20 million rides daily. Such a large footfall also generates mountains of waste, with major railway stations alone generating 670 tonnes of solid waste daily, of which about half is plastic waste.

But that may soon change. Starting Tuesday, the Railways will serve breakfast in biodegradable bagasse bowls in six Shatabdis, and meals in biodegradable trays in four Rajdhanis originating from Delhi. “It will help to reduce non-biodegradable waste like plastic and aluminium,” said Siddharth Singh, a spokesperson for the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC).

Indian Railways’ catering services are handled by the IRCTC that provides catering in 10-15% of 12,000-odd trains, the service in the rest of the trains is outsourced to private caterers.

“We have been rail travellers for a long time, it was painful to see the litter people create,” Ved Krishna, managing director of Yash Papers, a manufacturer of the biodegradable items, said. “As soon as you enter cities, it is a garbage dump on both sides of the tracks. Even in the countryside, we can see litter around the lines.”

To begin with, only breakfast bowls and three-compartment meal trays used to serve lunch and dinner will go green. Unlike plastic that takes hundreds of years to decompose, bagasse, the fibrous remains after sugarcane juice is extracted, decomposes in about 60 years. To meet the requirement for even 32 trains means providing 1.5 million meal trays and 1.5 million breakfast bowls.

The trays that currently cost ~1-5 could now cost almost double that amount. The proposal is stuck currently because the Railways is trying to find the best way to implement and scale-up the use of biodegradable tableware. One of the ways being considered is introducing a requirement for providing eco-friendly tableware within the tendering process for private caterers.