Online garbage disposal pays off

A fortnight ago, 40-year-old Harini Thirunarayanan had a surprise visitor at her doorstep. It was a smartly-dressed young man with an electronic weighing machine who had come to collect her non-biodegradable garbage. Plastic bottles, milk packet covers, newspapers, batteries – everything went in. Ms. Harini was paid a tidy sum in return. She is one of the 500 registered users of an experiment in social entrepreneurship that kicked off last month. The idea is simple: register on www.kuppathotti.com, segregate household waste at source, and once a month, someone will come and pick it up from your doorstep after seeking an appointment. For parting with their recyclable waste, which would have otherwise been Chennai Corporation’s problem, customers get paid. The service is available all over the city. Gone are the days when Ms. Harini used to carry thick bundles of old newspapers, weighing 2 to 3 kg, to the nearest scrap dealer. Now, a professional executive comes over to pick up not just newspapers, but a variety of other things, including plastic bags. “I even get an electronic receipt through e-mail,” Ms.Harini says. “Many of the things that we earlier used to dump with the general garbage, we have started segregating.” The segregated waste from each household is processed by Kuppathotti.com at a central godown and sold to various recyclers. Ultimately, she says, each one us needs to understand the consequences of our actions and be more aware of the environmental damage that non-biodegradable waste can cause. “We are even getting paid for it now. What more can one want?” she asks. Joseph Jegan, co-founder of ‘Kuppathotti.com’, says that the amount of recyclable items that he regularly saw inside Corporation bins drove him to start the website. “Besides, though my family was aware of the environmental damage of certain kinds of waste, our jobs in the IT sector did not allow us any time. We just dumped everything into one common garbage bin.” He says some of his customers have already changed their behaviour because of the monetary incentive. “Many of them save milk packet covers and plastic bottles, for example. We are also planning to help in segregation and would soon be giving out enclosed bins in green, white and blue colour. The collection cycle also needs to be brought down to each week.” Stressing the solid waste management has become a big problem in the city, Mr.Jegan says that ideally, source segregation must be done by the government itself. “It can be done. There are working systems in a number of European countries. But it would require sustained follow-up, adequate incentives and a citizen-friendly approach.” But for the moment, his only request is: “Do not throw away your garbage. Dump it on us.” http://www.cleantick.com/users/itsmenandhas/blogs/online-garbage-disposal-pays-off