Waste Warriors Society

If I am selected as a winner for The Elevate Prize, I would use this funding of USD $500,000 to expand our work further to set up waste management infrastructure and reverse logistics networks in remote, rural and hilly areas on the eco-sensitive Himalayan Landscape. We would recover/divert over 2 Million Kgs of waste annually from our environment to authorised end processing plants. In the process, we will also be able to provide dignified career opportunities to over 200 waste pickers, mostly women from economically marginalised sections of the society. 

We would invest deeply in capacity building of our village and district administration as well as our forest department to train them to eventually lead these projects. In addition to managing the waste generated, we would like to invest in new initiatives to reduce the waste generated by promoting local eco-friendly packaging free products. We can’t recycle our way out of this herculean problem, so we need to develop projects to reduce, and re-use the waste to build an economy that is truly circular. 

My dream is that Waste Warriors’ work in the Himalayan landscape will inspire thousands of other youth across the world to protect their environment.

Forty hour train journeys from south India to north India as an undergraduate student, with a constant never ending stream of plastic pollution across the railway tracks, were the defining moments in shaping my career choices. I realised that there was no ‘away’ for all this waste that we generate, and made it my life’s mission to address this problem.

In 2012, Jodie Uphill, started Waste Warriors with an empty bag, a pair of gloves, a few volunteers and a dream to clean up India! 

Waste Warriors is now a 100 member strong team, aimed at improving the waste management infrastructure in the Himalayan landscape. It is heartbreaking to see images of tigers, snow leopards and other majestic animals having to bear the brunt of plastic pollution. Our goal is that no waste should be burnt or dumped in these regions. If products find a way to reach these remote areas, the associated packaging waste will have to find its way back to a proper destination. 

As of now, we have successfully managed over 5000 MT of waste over the last 8 years, and are poised to scale up significantly to manage over 2000 MT of waste annually.

Jim Corbett National Park, spread over an area of 1200 sq kms,  has over 400 villages and 400+ resorts in its vicinity with a population of approximately 160,000 people and annual 300,000 tourist footfall. All of the ~2500 MT/year of waste produced in these villages is either burnt in the open or illegally dumped in the forests or the river streams as there is no access to municipal waste collection systems. This leads to increased instances of man-animal conflict near the dumping sites. Burning of waste in the open releases toxic gases like dioxins, which can cause reproductive disorders, disrupt endocrine functions etc. The world produces over 2 billion tonnes of waste annually out of which close to 40% is mismanaged or openly burnt or ends up in our oceans. Across the world, tigers, leopards, deers, cows, dogs, birds as well as marine species have been found severely impacted due to human plastic pollution. 

Waste Warriors hires local women for doorstep waste collection, trains them on further segregation and creates the market linkage for the waste streams.  Our goal is to ensure Zero Dumping Zero Burning of waste by empowering the local government to take ownership of the project.

We have a 3C approach towards solving this problem: Collection, Conversion & Community Engagement.

We collect segregated waste from doorstep on a fixed routine basis through SHG women so that the villagers don’t dump or burn their waste. We collect waste only from the households that pay user fees, ensuring the buy-in of local villagers. 

We convert the waste to value by training local women on upcycling some of the waste materials into handmade products which are sold to tourists. Other waste streams are segregated further and sent to downstream recycling partners.

We engage closely with the local community - SHG women for waste collection, local youth for managing operations, students, tourists, businesses, village and district administration as well as the Forest Department. 

One of the unique aspects of our solution is the ability to handle low grade and non-recyclable waste like multi-layered plastics through Extended Producer Responsibility Credits and Plastic Credits financing. Our projects are designed for scale with an exit strategy during the inception stage onwards. We fit all the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that the operations can continue even without our daily intervention so that we can move on to other problematic areas.

Waste when burnt leads to toxic emissions, and when dumped it leads to air and water pollution. Plastics break down further into micro-plastics, and also leach out toxic chemicals in the environment. These have severe long term impact on the local population as well as on the flora and fauna. 

By offering waste collection systems in a decentralised manner, we are empowering the community to take ownership of their surroundings thereby reducing open dumping and burning. 

Once a solution can be implemented in one Tiger Reserve, it can be replicated across all Tiger Reserves and National Parks in India.

Our project integrates the local community, the tourists, the students as well as local panchayats and forest officials. The reason why our project is so effective, and designed for long term sustainability is that except for the Project Manager, the entire team that we have built are from the villages where we offer our services. 

Since 2012, we have managed 5000+ MT of waste from 15000+ homes and organised over a 1000 cleanup drives! Due to the success of our Corbett Project, we have been asked to replicate the same model in the villages around the Govind Wildlife Sanctuary. 

As of financial year 2020-21, our teams are currently directly engaging and serving 27,000 people in 5 locations across Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh states in India:  in the urban sprawl of Dehradun, in the tourist hills of Dharamshala, by the Ganga river in Rishikesh, in forest villages around Corbett Tiger Reserve, and in the mountain villages around Govind Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttarkashi.

The people being served – from individuals, families, students, to business owners and staff – are being engaged through door-to-door awareness campaigns and waste collection services, community workshops, as well as online sessions during COVID curfews. This also includes nearly 400 informal waste pickers who have been directly engaged, trained, and on boarded into our various programs for their upliftment.

In the next one year, we anticipate and aim to deepen our impact in existing projects and to expand into two more project locations, to directly engage and serve close to 40,000 people.

Indirectly, we benefit over a million tourists that travel to our beautiful and eco-sensitive project locations. Additionally, I believe that through our work we will positively impact countless wildlife in the region including Tigers, Elephants, Snow Leopards etc.

At the core of our efforts, we measure our impact with three metrics:
1. # people engaged with behaviour change communications in the Himalayan region;
2. # solid waste collected, and processed for further recycling; and
3. # waste pickers, especially women, formalised, trained, and empowered to be valuable contributors to the formal waste value chain

These three metrics are direct outcomes of our focused efforts on
1. empowering residential and business communities to adopt sustainable practices for waste management,
2. engaging, formalising, and empowering female waste workers, and
3. building positive and long-term partnerships with government, corporate, and nonprofit entities to implement collaborative solutions on the ground.

The outcomes of our efforts are directly linked to the following UN SDGs:
1, No Poverty,
5, Gender Equality
6, Clean Water and Sanitation
8, Decent Work and Economic Growth 
11, Sustainable Cities & Communities;
12, Responsible Consumption & Production;
13, Climate Action;
17, Partnership for the Goals. 

In the next three years, we plan to collect 6 Million Kg of waste, change waste management behaviours of 100,000 people, and empower 1000 waste pickers. We define success as a time when no wildlife in Himalayan region ever ingests plastic waste.

Financial Barriers: As a grassroots organisation, we were driven by the passion of volunteers and early adopters. We strove for on-ground impact and couldn’t afford dedicated resources in aspects of fundraising, advocacy, or research. While we want to continue being a passion-driven organisation, I believe that passion should not be penalised. We would like to pay competitively to attract experienced professionals required for us to scale. With the help of the Elevate Prize, I can attract the best minds of the country to solve this complex socio-environmental problem.

Administrative Barriers: Government capacity-building programs are vital for long-term success. Networking with state, district, and village officials and coordination between a range of administrative departments requires dedicated resources. With the Elevate Prize, I hope to build a strong approach for government engagement at a senior level across our locations.

Technical Barriers: Transportation cost of waste from remote villages in Himalayan region with difficult terrain is a huge barrier in implementing waste management projects in these locations. With the help of the Elevate Prize, we will build mobile baling machines and set up a process for baling waste generated at these locations to save over 70% of transportation costs thereby increasing adoption.

We intend to leverage being an Elevate Prize winner through targeted online and offline thematic campaigns:

Conscious Consumption: Waste reduction and reuse are vital to stem waste generation in the first place. Promoting these methods and practices will inspire communities we work with as well as our social media followers. We will drive mass behaviour change initiatives to grow our fanbase from 15,000 to 100,000+ followers.

Responsible Tourism: We’ve organised 1000+ cleanups over the last decade. We’ve seen that when tourists participate in cleanups, it leaves a deep impression on their perception of waste and significantly reduces the chances of their littering. We hope to organise many more much-needed clean-ups with tourists to promote #ResponsibleTourism.

Inspire Young Warriors: We recently organised a month-long pan-India inter-school waste management challenge with participants from 22 cities. With the increased reach through the Elevate Prize, we would love to organise a global challenge for waste management initiatives to build an army of Young Warriors. 

Virtual Reality: Seeing the beauty of our Himalayas trashed with plastic waste through VR videos can be a powerful way of transforming public behaviour globally. We will create a compilation of VR videos showcasing the problems and the solutions.

As an organisation, we’ve always prided ourselves on our diversity, integrity and resilience. In 2012, we were founded by two women - one British and one Indian. We have now grown to 100+ full-time team members currently led by a 27-year old CEO with 40% of our leadership team being women.

Currently, the salaries of our senior managers are only about 3.5 times that of our field workers. While we want to increase salaries to a more competitive number, one of our goals is to never have more than a 10X difference between the salaries of the highest and lowest paid team members. We have always ensured there is no gender based discrimination in pay-scale of our team members and will continue to do so. 

Over 60% of our team are from economically disadvantaged sections of the society involved in waste collection, segregation, and processing. 

One of my dreams has always been to hire specially-abled youth with hearing or speaking disabilities etc in specific roles suitable for them and also to break stereotypes by hiring transgenders for full time positions in our organisation. This requires significant investment of resources, which we will be able to afford with The Elevate Prize!

Graduating in Materials Science, from one of India’s premier engineering institutes, IIT (BHU) Varanasi, we were taught to develop complex materials like plastics and composites for better properties. However, not once were we asked to think about the impacts of the end-of-life of these materials. Because of such shortsightedness, we’ve successfully trashed the deepest point in the sea to the highest point on land in the Himalayas! Therefore, I decided to find solutions for end-of-life materials handling starting with the most eco-sensitive regions.

We have team members who have, as trek leaders, experienced the degradation of Himalayan landscapes due to waste dumping and burning. Some of our team members belong to the villages we serve around the Corbett Tiger Reserve. They still don’t have access to electricity but have witnessed Tigers, Elephants and other wildlife impacted by plastic pollution!

Our team with diverse backgrounds in engineering, operations, wildlife conservation, trekking, software development, government engagement, etc  have a deep personal connection with the landscape, and an in-depth practical knowledge of localised solutions for waste management. 

Lastly, we are one of the few waste management non-profit organisations working at scale in these regions to address this herculean problem.

When I joined Saahas Zero Waste as a Program Manager in 2016, the startup was struggling to launch a new business vertical for electronic-waste management. They had a rude receptionist, they hardly responded to queries and their government engagement was relatively poor.

Setting up the new business vertical, I was able to sign contracts worth $350,000 USD within 2 years. I took up the role of receptionist to understand how customers perceived us, the role of Corporate Communications to respond to 90% of emails and messages sent to the organisation, and also helped win an award from the Prime Minister of India. I built strong government relationships through which the startup was able to win contracts to draft the solid waste management policy for the State of Karnataka. 

At Waste Warriors, when I joined as the CEO, we had only about 2 months expenses as cash reserves in our account. For an organisation with 100+ employees, that is a big risk for survival. Through smart cost cutting, aggressive follow ups with vendors and partners, building relationships with new funders for unrestricted long term funding, we now have cash in hand to cover expenses of at least the next 5 months.

I haven't had opportunities yet any major speaking engagements, but I am certain that with support of the Elevate Prize, I will be able to speak at TEDx events, global forums on sustainability and waste management etc. Below are a few examples of my work being covered in mass media. 

1. An interview by The News Minute on "Responsible E-Waste Management " The video on Facebook has over a 110,000 views. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1964935950432796

2. Representing Saahas Zero Waste on national television (in Hindi): Starting 00:54 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQbPErSJi8U

3. Representing Renew Oceans as the General Manager: Starting 02:16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auw0Th6lWfo

I have been featured by LinkedIn and other leading newspapers in India:
1. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6594788740554600448/

2. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/iit-bhu-to-form-green-club/articleshow/18999498.cms

3. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/bhu-students-come-up-with-save-food-initiative/articleshow/21809181.cms

The Elevate Prize would be a true game changer in taking Waste Warriors to the scale required to address the challenges in the Himalayan regions we work in. Most of the current funding we raise is highly restricted to specific project budget line items, leaving little room for innovation, branding, and organisational development.

As an Elevate Prize winner, I will be able to amplify the impact of our work by investing in:

• Building infrastructure for collection and processing in remote areas to divert 2 million Kg of waste annually. 
• Developing innovative technology like solar powered mobile balers for improving transportation efficiency. 
• Building global waste fellowship programs for Young Warriors - to inspire youth across the developing world to initiate similar projects in their countries. 
• Experiment with reuse and refillable systems to reduce waste generation. 
• Creating eco-friendly forest based products through local Self Group Women to be sold to tourists for livelihood generation and environmental conservation. 
• Strengthening our team to take Waste Warriors from Good to Great! 
• Marketing and Communications to re-brand ourselves as a thought leader in the sector. (This will act as a catalyst for further fundraising required to implement the above points) 

I strongly believe in value of building partnerships with experts instead of trying to re-invest the wheel. Since all the SDGs are closely interlinked, it is extremely important to have a wide variety of partnerships in our work. Apart from our immediate funding partners, we have partnerships with the following organisations: 

1. Break Free From Plastic: We recently became a core member of this coalition, and are coordinating a Covid-19 related waste audit in the communities we work.

2. Preserve Ocean Plastic Initiative: We are one of their four international NGO partners to whom they contribute a percentage of their profits made from sale of products made of ocean-rescued plastics.

3. rePurpose Global: We are currently implementing a pilot project with them for plastic credits for the recovery and processing of low grade non-recyclable waste in remote and rural landscapes. 

4. Saahas: We are part of a consortium with them to implement pilot projects in Haridwar and Rishikesh for reducing the waste dumping in  the Ganges.
   

5. PashooPakshee: We are exploring collaboration with them for training our waste workers to build and market sustainable products. 

6. Haqdarshak: We are exploring collaboration with them for easy access to government welfare schemes for waste pickers.