Mass Adopt Mysore-ism across India

In “The waste of a Nation” by Harvard University Press, Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey discuss the trash problem of India, go testing hypotheses and prove that this was in the making for decades – Consumer Capitalism, Urbanisation and population growth that went beyond the holds of the administration in terms of the support ecosystem. Yet, In an interview with the authors^[1], they still point out the bright spots, that are still very much active in the system – The traditional recycling system (Kabaadi), the inherent Frugal nature of the Indians and the Labour availability.

To corroborate the readings, I was skimming through some literature and found an interesting Working paper^[2]on Solid Waste Management in India. While, India still recycles a higher percentage of its waste than the Global Average of 15%, the major problem is the uselessness of a still large share, simply because they’re unsegregated. So, The solution that I want to propose to the problem of waste management in India is “Segregate and Collect at Source and Incentivize the Stake holders”. Studies^[3]say that 50-60% of the waste are in general wet waste that can be converted to organic manure, another 20% is recyclable solid waste. So, considering Delhi for an example, out of the 10,000metric tonnes of waste the city generates now, 1000-1500 only needs to actually go to the landfills in place of the current 4500-5000metric tonnes if there’s proper segregation.

Why emulate Mysore? It’s among the cleanest cities in India and more interestingly 95% of Mysore’s waste are collected at source. Ideas are in the air, they need to be formally integrated into a sustainable business model and implemented on-ground.

The Challenge:

How to do effective waste management and contribute to a litter free India?

Solution:

The AHA Moment:

I was thinking through a solution and happened to watch the waste disposal scheme in the apartment I live in. There’re separate buckets to collect the waste and the waste collectors move them in to associated containers. Being a decently educated society, I expected this procedure to be working perfect and called up the recycling agent to check up how the returns are. I was shell-shocked to find that, irrespective of the three different buckets with clear instructions on where to put what, they’re able to get money only for 20 – 30% of the waste collected.  The reason - it’s all dumped together on to the loading trucks as I could watch, the very next day. The waste goes to another Segregation centre, where it’s separated again and they use only the wet waste that they can extract out, and the rest (recyclable solid waste + Nonre-cyclabe garbage) goes to a landfill. Such a rampant wastage of energy happens among an educated upper-middle class Gated Community and the only reason I could garner was the lack of proper incentive to see the process through. This AHA moment led to structuring and stream-lining of my thoughts towards incentivising and alerting the source about this happening.

Feels Like Solution:

> Mobile APP to aggregate all the stake holders.

>Segregate the garbage at source and the quality of Segregation shall be used to generate Grade Points

> Payment Platforms to be included to transfer cash backs - thus getting benefits of increased customer participation through CSR engagement.

Looks Like Prototype:

Protoype - 3 levels

1.     Waste Collection :- Different Coloured Buckets - Actual Photo

2.     Mobile UI Wire frame Interface :- 

Before : The ECOSEG UI interface - data to sorting location

After: Sorting Location Supervisor to link up the quality with the customer ID and send the data to the payment platform.

3.     The payment platform credits the necessary cash balance to the account of the respective customers.

Low Cost Experiment

Hypothesis: - 

Incentivizing the stake holders will lead to increased quality of waste segregation at source.

Experiment: - 

1.     Select my apartment as the test-base

2.     Arrange for the Estate Manager to convey to the agents about the importance of not mixing up the garbage boxes.

3.     Arrange for a small tip for the collection agents and see if the loading happens more efficiently.

4.     Observe the process for the next day.

Cost of Experiment:-

Ø Practically Zero, as the association funds are available for disposal. The Estate Manager can be convinced of the same.

Assumptions: -

Ø The Estate manager would be co-operating impartially with the test.   

Measure of Success: - 

Ø There would be no mixing of already segregated waste while loading on to the truck. They would be properly loaded and watched for by the loaders, without any supervision.

> Confirmation from the Recycling agent that the apartment quality of segregation is well above his requirement.