Our newest adventure started in the Hasiru Dala office, where members from all the parties named below where present. We were warmly welcomed by the kind staff with some very good chai. Nalini gave us a short introduction in to Hasiru Dala and her impact; emphasizing the importance in creating more sustainable opportunities for the waste pickers and other informal workers. Niels did a presentation on SweepSmart, highlighting the opportunities in the collaboration.
Hasiru Dala is a membership based non-profit organization of waste pickers and other informal waste workers like scrap dealers and Kabariwalla’s. Hasiru Dala strives to integrate marginalized informal waste workers including waste pickers in the solid waste management framework by utilizing their expertise in the domain. Initiated in 2013, Hasiru Dala now has a membership of over 7500 waste pickers and is innovating services and business models that leverage waste pickers’ expertise and entrepreneurship, generating stable livelihoods in the process.
As you can read in the previous updates ELCITA/Waste Wise, this site gets its waste primarily from companies in the Electronic City. In order to live up to their motto ‘Zero Waste to Landfill’ it is important to reduce the Reject Waste (waste that is not valuable enough to sort). When waste is not properly sorted at the source valuable materials often get contaminated; making them rejects. That is why Enid and Silvia went to investigate the segregation policy at some of Waste Wise’s most important customers: HP and Siemens. It appeared that they don't separate in the proper way; they separate their waste in to three streams: paper, plastic and general waste. This is of little value to Waste Wise; since they handle three different streams; dry waste, wet waste and reject waste. In the latter categories dry waste consists of plastic, paper and other high valuable (literally dry) waste, meaning that the separation at HP in paper and plastic is not very effective. Wet Waste is alike the Dutch well-known ‘gft’ waste; organic waste that can be composted. Here lies an opportunity to educate the customer in a better way.
On top of all this, the week ended with great news: Ms. Rama approved the sketches for the conveyor belt! Niels and Silvia presented the findings on Saturday. This means that the conveyor belt will be ordered upcoming week.
