Promotion of Menstrual Hygiene

Presentation: Project_Concept Note

Document: Project Financials (Source: Official Website)

Mobilizing the Waste Collectors: A Concept Note

We propose a separated-at-source system of door-to-door collection. The separated waste is then processed according to content:

• Organic waste (48% of household waste) is placed in a solar-concentrator dryer system costing around Rs 1500 consisting of a hinged glass hemisphere with an insulated square-metre sized base, having a vent at the top. Sunlight dries the waste and it can be collected the subsequent day. The higher calorific value waste thus generated can create small-scale thermal energy, indirectly tapping into India’s 7KW-hr of daily sunlight.
• Inorganic recyclable waste is collected and taken to a central processing location where subsequent separation on the basis of material is carried out. The material collected is then sold for recycling.
• Non-recyclable waste is collected for incineration.

The backbone of our system is the person collecting the waste going door-to-door. In India, an overwhelming majority of waste-management workers are women and we want to create an SHG system at the colony level. One worker can cover 150 households, charging each household a nominal fee of 15/month in a middle-income neighborhood. Around 10 Garbage Collection Bins costing Rs 2500 would be set up through partial corporate sponsorships and these could be painted by the younger members of the community, to foster a sense of ownership, adding a fun element to waste management.

Each of the members of the SHG receives a salary and variable payment collected as fee, based on the number of households. The SHG further makes money through selling recyclable waste and the processed organic waste, creating a fund base for its members. The main beneficiary is the grassroots waste collector, who will advocate source-level segregation, in order to speed up work and maximize profits. The colony benefits from the greener environmental footprint. Each stakeholder is thus incentivized in these sub-100 Rs/per month/per household plans.