Friday, November 2, 2007

Saahas - The Waste Management People

As you drive around Bangalore you get to see lot of things – Beautiful Trees, Buildings under construction, heavy traffic & above all lots of garbage.

Talking about garbage we still see rag pickers segregating the waste to pick up the best of the scrap, however in this exercise they spread the garbage more. Some years ago many localities decided to adopt home garbage pickup model – where the garbage is collected from the doorstep instead of the person throwing it in the garbage bin. This works fine for a residential locality but the commercial or the areas where the pickup is not adapted still suffers. Bangalore generates 3,000 tonnes of waste everyday from households and commercial establishments. Around 50% of this waste is organic. The balance is accounted for by inorganic and hazardous waste.

Bangalore City Corporation has come up with a new scheme where they will pay plastic waste Rs.6 per kg directly to whoever gives it at their collection point. The plan is to set up around 120 collection points.

Saahas is a Bangalore based voluntary organisation are committed to finding solutions to problems related to solid waste management in the city. Saahas is ready to adopt one of the 120 collection points with the support of the Bangalore City corporation to make JP nagar 6th phase a plastic free zone. The initiative plan is being drafted & is being presented to the Bangalore City commissioner soon.

Saahas also work with Corporates on waste management. Project Satyam – they are composting their organic material in the same campus. They also work with Lalbagh Botonical garden on the same purpose.

Citizens E-Waste Recycling Initiative
Over the last two years, Saahas has worked closely with the Hazardous Waste Management, Programme Karnataka (HAWA), to study the various issues related to generation of e-waste as also its flow, recycling and final disposal.

Bangalore generates around 4,00,000 dry cell batteries from households and commercial establishments. Earlier there was no possibility of recycling this material safely. However, E-Parisaraa has come forward to ensure safe recycling and disposal by retrieving the metal and plastic components which in turn are recycled into secondary products. The hazardous content is then extracted and stored for disposal in the hazardous waste facility which is currently being set up close to Tumkur, near Bangalore.


Saahas is working in partnership with WeP Peripherals and E-Parisara. They have setup the first ever city wide collection programme for household e-waste like batteries, cds & floppies. One of the centers is in the State Bank of India branch. They have also setup these collections points in more than 20 schools around Bangalore. Hope this effort really pays of in making a bangalore a better place.
For more information check www.saahas.org

As Imelda Marcos Quotes “People say I'm extravagant because I want to be surrounded by beauty. But tell me, who wants to be surrounded by garbage?”

... Anand Varadaraja

2 comments:

Sur said...

hey Anand great going! two articles in a short span, I am sure the blogging bug has caught on with u. A really informative post and a very commendable initiative by Saahas, I hope we would be able to do something to help them, at least in the JP nagar area.

Akhila said...

Its great to hear about these initiatives. Great work!