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Won't be wasting away
Three
engineers gave up lucrative jobs to clean Mumbai and to create
wealth out of waste
Long
before the nation answered the clarion call for a Swachh Bharat,
three
young electrical engineers took a good look at their environment
and
the decision to save it followed naturally.
Debartha
Banerjee, Jayanth Nataraju and Ritvik Rao were all new to Mumbai
when they met at the Tata Institute of
Social Sciences in June 2010.
During
a social entrepreneurship course, they decided to embark on a project
that would later become Sampurn(e)arth.
“The
name is derived from the Sanskrit meaning of the words,“ explains
Debartha
Banerjee, one of the three founders. “`Sampurn' means complete,
while `arth' means `purpose', as also
`wealth'.Sampurn(e)arth embodies our
vision of creating a purposeful venture
which benefits both our planet and
economy,“
he adds.
While
working with NGOs that dealt with waste management at TISS,
Banerjee,
Nataraju and Rao realised that the amount of work yet to be done
in the field was nothing short of
gargantuan. “Many NGOs worked on waste
management, but their impact was too small,“
explains Nataraju. “This city
produces
roughly 10,000 tonnes of waste daily, and the NGOs could only deal
with 100-200 tonnes a day. Our goal was to
create a scalable model that can
collect, process and recycle waste in much
larger volumes.“
Sampurn(e)arth
Environment Solutions, set up in 2012, provides customized
waste management solutions, including waste
audits, collection, recycling
and
maintenance. Projected as a zero waste model, it allows clients to not only
cut losses through recycled goods, but it
also helps clients make a profit with
options such as biogas production. Till
date, the trio have catered to over
75
clients. These include heavyweight corporates such as Tata Power,
Axis
Bank, DBS Bank, TCS and L&T, educational institutes, housing
complexes
and the municipal corporation. They have crafted end-to-end
waste management solutions, including the
setting up of waste trading centres,
biogas
plants and composting systems for organic waste.
One
of the biggest beneficiaries of this system, they say, is the city itself.
“The municipal corporation spends thousands
of crores of rupees on waste
management,“ says Nataraju. “That
expenditure can be reduced.
Moreover,
money can be earned with our system.“ Banerjee adds, “In Mumbai,
most dumping grounds are next to water
bodies, and it is quite likely that a lot
of our food and water are polluted.If we
test the fish that we eat, it will probably
be toxic. So we need to solve this problem.“
However,
the environment is not the only beneficiary of their work.
The
founders explain that they were greatly influenced by the work they did
with the NGO Stree Mukti Sangathana, which
works with women waste
collectors. “A huge number of people,
especially women, work in the
unorganised
sector as waste pickers. Most people almost never interact
with
them in their daily lives. Our goal was to integrate them into society,
by training them to recycle and manage
waste. By working with Sampurn(e)arth,
they have a better livelihood and
aspirations for the future.
The
unorganised labour force has the potential to be a part of tomorrow's
solutions,“ says Banerjee.
However,
their journey has not been an easy one. “Our biggest challenge
is not awareness, but people's attitude,“
admits Rao. “In other countries,
people
segregate their waste into five to six categories to help with collection
and recycling, but in Mumbai, even if we
have two categories, that's half the
battle won,“ adds Banerjee.
It's
been three years since the project kicked off and today, Sampurn(e)arth
has transformed waste collectors into a team
of waste managers.
They have, so far, handled over 1,000 tonnes
of dry waste and 1,000 tonnes
of
wet waste. But they are only getting started.
The
founders explain that they hope to scale up the system to handle giant
city projects and even expand the project to
other Indian cities
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Pragya
Mukherjee
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MM17SEP15
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