Do you know the name of the nearest scrap dealer in your locality? Most of us probably don’t — these invisible men who collect old newspapers and bottles at our doorstep in their tricycles are silently recycling hundreds of tonnes of waste every month. A bunch of youngsters in the city, who are part of social enterprise Kabadiwalla Connect, recently launched the ‘Invisible Recyclers Public Campaign’ to acknowledge the role of the scrap dealers in keeping the Earth clean.

An information service that connects communities to their local scrap dealers, Kabadiwalla Connect celebrated the invisible recycler, the pazhaya paper kaaran, at the event. There was music and a photo exhibition: Tahaer and team created an art installation with material sourced from a scrap dealer, while another team painted tricycles used by the men.

Siddharth Hande, the founder and research lead, explained how for three months, interns from IIT Madras, as part of the Indo-German Centre for Sustainability, mapped the 13 wards in zone 13 in the city. This includes areas such as Besant Nagar, Adyar, Guindy and Velachery. “They found 204 kabadiwallahs in the zone,” explained Siddharth. Once mapped, the data went into making their information system that connects residents in the area to the kabadiwallahs. Says H.S. Sudhira from Gubbi Labs, Bangalore, working with the enterprise: “The kabadiwallahs who we mapped recycle 6,00,000 bottles, 400 tonne of paper, 80 tonne of plastic, and 80 tonne of metal every month.” Siddharth felt that we need to “send more into this robust ecosystem. The more we use this system, the less recyclable waste is sent back into landfills,” he added...........Read more

Source web page: The Hindu