Women-Led Waste Management and Livelihoods

Coastal communities struggle with ocean-bound plastic waste on a daily basis. In fact, today a local fishing boat brings in a catch that has nearly 50% plastic trash.

The impact of the existing waste dumping system today is humungous—to human health, the environment, and the socioeconomic well-being of an estimated 700,000 people who live in the Coastal communities of Karnataka.

A combination of gender-sensitive responses​ to climate change, and technological intervention with regional context is what is lacking with current solutions for waste management.

Our solution to the crisis brings together waste management and generating sustainable livelihoods.

We train women from the local community to set up systems for waste collection, use data to gain insights about waste generation patterns and to effectively segregate waste both to rescue recyclable material and to also reuse material that would otherwise end up in oceans and landfills.

1. Divert 25,00,000 kilos of waste from contaminating the coast and the Western Ghats.
2. Generated predictable income opportunities for over 150 women with social security. Through this work, we aim to replace transgenerational poverty with education, enablement and economic empowerment, mainly focusing on women.
3. We have conducted 150 eco-school education workshops
4. Enabled adoption of cloth alternatives to plastic bags across 5000+ households