(This post happened end of August, 2011)
After being disappointed that no-one actually cared about innovation in sanitation in Trichy I rethought my plans to collaborate with organizations there. Again, I found NGOs looking for funds, grant opportunities, but having no interest in simply taking time to even consider thinking of new ideas or pathways to addressing hygiene.
So it was useful.
From there I made a long journey by bus to Pune, via Bangalore. This amounts to basically 2 days on 6 different buses (4 were intercity bangalore - and those were the worst)
I was headed there to follow a lead with Waste Ventures in Delhi to gather info and make recommendations on a new wastecart design. The hope was to also see dis/connections between hygiene and wastepickers and waste and design and technology.
The plan was to first go to Pune where Swach is a leading NGO-built-for-profit-but-supplemented-by-grants organization around wastepickers. It has been working there for a long time, and is the premier example of a large city (5 million+ i am told) incorporating wastepickers into the profits of waste collection. Their waste cart design was a big deal - made by a local university called Maharashtra Inst of Tech (MIT) and it was this design that Waste Ventures tried to take to their project site with bad outcomes.
In the end, it turns out that noone from Swach has any contact info for the students/profs who worked with them on the design. But I spent some time with a few of the door-to-door waste collectors and had a chat with the CEO about the design challenges they face - which was not mostly wastecarts, they want to find more innovative sheds for segregating.
After being disappointed that no-one actually cared about innovation in sanitation in Trichy I rethought my plans to collaborate with organizations there. Again, I found NGOs looking for funds, grant opportunities, but having no interest in simply taking time to even consider thinking of new ideas or pathways to addressing hygiene.
So it was useful.
From there I made a long journey by bus to Pune, via Bangalore. This amounts to basically 2 days on 6 different buses (4 were intercity bangalore - and those were the worst)
I was headed there to follow a lead with Waste Ventures in Delhi to gather info and make recommendations on a new wastecart design. The hope was to also see dis/connections between hygiene and wastepickers and waste and design and technology.
The plan was to first go to Pune where Swach is a leading NGO-built-for-profit-but-supplemented-by-grants organization around wastepickers. It has been working there for a long time, and is the premier example of a large city (5 million+ i am told) incorporating wastepickers into the profits of waste collection. Their waste cart design was a big deal - made by a local university called Maharashtra Inst of Tech (MIT) and it was this design that Waste Ventures tried to take to their project site with bad outcomes.
In the end, it turns out that noone from Swach has any contact info for the students/profs who worked with them on the design. But I spent some time with a few of the door-to-door waste collectors and had a chat with the CEO about the design challenges they face - which was not mostly wastecarts, they want to find more innovative sheds for segregating.
Chai break. I spent a few hours with this crew. Hemandth is on the left. The names of the middle and the locality supervisor on the right I don't remember and didn't write down unfortunately.
After collecting from around the area, they dump it on the ground and separate it. The dump mechanism built in as a flap on the front is not being used as planned
A look at the trash.
They separated it into 2 buckets: resaleables and dump trash
They also seperated out things to take home with them. These are good shoes, bottles for liquid storage and cocunut husks which they burn in their cookstoves.
She found a half-filled water bottle and decided to wash her hands afterwards
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