Don't waste your waste
Little 11 year old Bhakti was buoyed and overwhelmed by the “Swachh Bharat Campaign”. She always had an urge to motivate others to keep their surroundings clean. Her purpose just got a kickstart.17 days later, she scolded her parents for throwing food packets on the road.They replied they couldn’t find any dustbins far and away. She remained silent. Again after 3 days,she faced a similar situation. NOT ENOUGH DUSTBINS?
Semi Clad and being hungry and jobless made Mohan descend the ladders of dignity from being a beggar to a thief. The devil resides in the mind of the unemployed. He had to resort to unlawful means to fill his stomach. NOT ENOUGH MONEY?
Bill Drayton in his book,”Leading Social Entrepreneurs Changing the World” has rightly mentioned,
“Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.”
The whole concept of “Swachh Bharat Campaign” seems to have it’s heart in the right pace but isn’t flawless.The major problem associated with it is that there are’nt enough dustbins to dump the day to day waste in our life and we inadvertently end up throwing it on the road.
It is here where an entrepreneur can step in who has a business school brain with a Social worker’s heart. If money could have changed the world, money would have changed the world.
India generates a shocking 16 crore kg of garbage every day.A chunk of the accountable garbage is dumped on big grounds and burnt. The unaccountable garbage is left on the roads to stink and vitiate our atmosphere. Unfortunately ,a lot of money is invested by the government in waste management but it has borne no fruit. Waste management has become a huge scam and from corporate to mafia everyone has got into the business of Solid Waste management.The lackadaisical attitude of the municipal corporation hasn’t helped either.
As per the trend in other countries, the municipal corporation leases garbage collection and garbage dumps to private bodies at a price. Usually ,one garbage truck carries 5-6 tons of garbage at a time and one ton of garbage is sold at around Rs 500. A company can take up the required responsibility and install dustbins as much as possible to collect garbage and then segregate the biodegradable and plastic waste as well. The biodegradable garbage can be treated and converted to biogas is quite obvious and that one ton of garbage can be made into gas equivalent to 2 LPG cylinders. Setting up biogas plants are easy and cost effective. It is also a well known fact that discarded plastic can be used to make roads as done in other countries.So with just an initial costly investment,the concerned company can mint a lot of money by selling plastic bottles to governments for building roads,selling Lpg cyclinders at subsidised rates and at the same time receiving money for collecting WASTE.
From a social point of view, waste management should be done in such a way that it is involves and employs thousands of waste collectors who earn a livelihood by collecting garbage. So the concerned company will employ homeless beggars to look after the dustbins all throughout the day and night and also assign them the duty of segregating biodegradable waste from plastics. This will lessen the risk of the dustbins being stolen because it is usually the beggars who resort to stealing such stuff to earn money.Now keeping the dustbins safe from getting stolen would be their job.
The idea solves the double purpose of keeping the environment clean(in line with the “Swachh Bharat Campaign”) and also employs the needy ones and takes them out from their cocoon of self destruction.
Some people believe in telling stories. Some believe in doing things about which stories will be told in times to come. The best way of doing social entrepreneurship as the saying of bill Drayton goes is, not by giving poor people a fish and feeding them for a day, but by teaching them to fish, in hopes of feeding them for a lifetime.The idea definitely can be implemented initially on a smaller scale and slowly and gradually on a bigger platform and can transform the Waste industry. Let us be a wandering entrepreneur touching billions of lives and be the monk who never bought a Ferrari.
Bhakti and Mohan would definitely be seen smiling if the idea turns into a reality.
DON’T WASTE YOUR WASTE.
