Waste Ventures aims to permanently raise 100 waste picker families out of poverty in the next year by providing them with a blueprint for environmentally processing garbage, to increase incomes 3x and to put their children back into school.
Every week, urban India produces a mound of garbage that weighs twice as much as the Empire State building. The only processing is done by waste pickers and their children who find and sell recyclable scraps, working in streets and landfills, earning less than $2 a day. We will transform the lives of 100 of these waste pickers in India by building an environmental waste management cooperative capable of processing 80% of waste for profit.
We made history by creating the first waste picker-owned fully integrated municipal waste system in India, in Osmanabad. We will now spread this system across India, training waste pickers to collect and segregate garbage door-to-door to produce compost and recyclable plastic pellets - growing their income from $45 to $135 per month. In the process of gaining ownership and dignified financial independence, a waste picker also prevents 120 tons of CO2 equivalent from harming the climate.
The waste picker cooperative will triple their incomes, allow their children the time to go to school, permanently break the cycle of poverty and establish environmental practices that prevent harmful greenhouse gases. This will also demonstrate to 25 Indian municipalities contemplating adopting Waste Ventures' blueprint that a low-cost environmentally-friendly solution that creates employment for the poor is possible!
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
