Help Renowaste-we take trash to its home(to recycle)not to landfills

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Being a student of social entrepreneurship at Tata Institue of Social Sciences i got a whole new perspective on how to solve the social problems via market mechanism. Renowaste is my effort in that process.

About this project

« Renowaste » is a social enterprise of Tata Institute of Social Sciences aimed at solving the problem of Improper Solid Waste Management in Urban India by engaging community and bringing about a behavioural change in our attitude towards waste currently it is based in Lucknow. It is a movement, an effort, an invitation to see to understand and to take the responsibility of waste humans are generating.

Why this project matters and your contribution and support too

We see an opportunity to address this issue from a different perspective. We want to start by reaching out to community, to challenge them to start being part of the solution to this problem by recognizing that there is a problem of improper disposal which is due to our own irresponsible nature, we want community to own the responsibility of ethical treatment of waste because ultimately, it’s the people who are generating waste so why should someone else be held responsible for its disposal after all it is going to affect us in the long run.

What we do and our goals -

In the first phase, our goal is twofold. On one side, we will work with municipal corporation and with individual housing societies where we will be doing waste audits so as to understand the pattern of waste generation and then we will proceed to employ the customised model for proper treatment of waste wet waste will be converted to organic compost or if the volume is high then the biogas plant will be installed. On the other side we will employ rag pickers in our daily operations like door-to-door waste collection, segregation and post processing of waste because in case of Lucknow most of the rag pickers are migrants from another states they are highly unorganized and they have no proper source of income, they work in very humiliating conditions, they are also exploited, society has a negative perception of them, by employing them and giving proper training to them we will ensure their social inclusion and their economic as well as social security they are the most important stakeholders in the whole process they will be provided with proper dress and safety gears while doing the work. Our intention is to change our perception about these ragpicker communities and contribute to the process of building trust and collaboration, a key element in order to achieve inclusive development.

This campaign will be supported by Swachh Bharat, NGOs and Goodwill ambassadors to generate public awareness about the negative impacts of the improper disposal of waste and also people will be told the proper way of segregation and how to handle the waste.

In the second phase we will be conducting various campaigns where we will tell people about different aspects of the problem and we will engage community to be a participant in the whole process because behavioural change is the most important factor when addressing a social issue we will be creating a collaborative platform called « I Recycle», a space where local communities will get to know all the aspects related to recycling and they will be motivated to do recycling in order to reduce burden on landfills and also to contribute to a better, cleaner and greener tomorrow

How the funds will be utilized -

Right now we are doing our project on a pilot basis and we are working with 155 households and for that, we have to employ two waste pickers for our daily operations of waste collection, segragation, and processing. We will be paying them regular salaries and also to motivate people to do segregation at source level we are going to distribute compost bin to each and every household on our expense and we will ask people to segregate and compost the wet waste in their home only. later on we will be purchasing the compost from them and sell it to agricultural market this way people will be incentivised to do segregation. so the part of funds collected will be utilised to purchase 155 compost bins. to provide social security to our waste pickers we have tied up with an NGO Swasthadhyay foundation, we will be providing health insurance to them and also their basic health will be taken care by the foundation. so renowaste will be paying for the health insurance from the funds mobilised. more information can be found on their website http://www.swasthadhyay.org/ . at present we have very limited land space which is causing many complications in our daily operations we are looking for other options to take some land on lease or on rent to keep our operations running smoothly we also require fund to meet our land requirement.

We need funds for thefollowing -

1. To check the level of motivation and to incentivise people to do segregation at source we will be distributing set of compost bins to each household. There are 155 households we are currently working with and the price for each set of compost bin is 850/-. So we see it initially costing around 130000/- including logistics charges.

2. We will be imploying two waste pickers who will look after our daily operations of waste collection, segregation and processing for the pilot period of three months. They will work full time for organization and will be registered on our rolls. We see their salary payment costing us 36000/- for a period of three months.

3. We will also be providing social security in the form of basic health insurance cover to our employees (waste pickers). For that we have tied up with swasthadhyay foundation and organisation will be paying their installments for insurance for the period of one year we see it costing around 16000/- for one year.

4. To support our day to day operations (specially post processing of waste) and to meet our logistics requirement we are in the process of taking some land on lease/rent. And we will be also hiring a manual rickshaw for collection of door to door waste. Our total estimation for this purpose is around 30000/- one time investment.

What We Need & What You Get

We have not set a specific goal. At this stage, we are asking for your support so that we can continue participating in the Social Business Creation Competition http://socialbusinesscreation.hec.ca/competitio...

Every penny you contribute equals 1 vote supporting this project. You can vote as many times as you wish!

We value and appreciate every rupee you can donate and we believe that no matter how much we collect; every contribution will help us spread more and more the word and strengthen our presence in social media and physical spaces. We believe that the more people understand the need to transform our surroundings and the more they accept that improper waste management is problem of every single one of us and we have to take responsibility of proper post processing of the waste, the more we will be able to address this problem. And we need your help for that!

In this first phase, the funds collected will be directed to employ and train more and more rag pickers in our daily operations of waste collection, segregation and processing so that we could stop more quantity of waste from reaching landfills and causing pollution and also, we are looking forward to conduct awareness camps in different residential societies. In the next phase, we are aiming to launch our website and app in order to capture the dry waste market and to increase our reach. Hopefully, resources will also allow us to start working on our project.

Other Ways You Can Help

There are many other ways you can contribute to strengthen our project. Join our movement by:

Visiting https://www.facebook.com/renowaste/ know more about our work

Sharing our content and messages with your friends and family and inviting them to financially support our campaign

Subscribing to our social media pages.

Contributing with your time, skills, contacts.... We are a small team and we want to do a lot because there is a need to do a lot and soon to change the situation! If you're interested in supporting this project and becoming part of the team, you can write us to info@renowaste.org. We will for sure find together the best way for you to contribute to this project.

Thank you very much for your support. We are looking forward for your feedbacks Your feedback is very important to us.

You can write us to info@renowaste.org

Ask for an update

20th September 2017

With all the support from our funders, we have managed to sustain our project and also we have started tetra packs recycling initiative in collaboration with few educational institutes. As of now, we are managing the wet waste of Bulk vegetable market in Lucknow, where we are processing 500 kg. of wet waste per day. We also qualified for the final round of social business creation competition in Montreal where we got good feedback on our project.