Updates

The first day started with the Aviral team and the municipal collection staff visiting 220 households in Ward no 20 of Haridwar and spoke to a total of 880 people on the different types of waste and their segregation. The team then distributed re-usable HDPE bags that were printed with segregation instructions to residents. The residents were requested to store their dry waste in these bags across 3 days for collection by the municipal staff on the 4th day. The second day was followed by further awareness generation activities as our team revisited the homes to orient residents on the practice of waste segregation and address any challenges they were facing with segregating their waste. On the third day, our team and municipal waste collection staff made rounds of the neighborhood and collected 140 kgs of wet waste. 

The 4th day marked the festival of kites, Basant Panchami on which we had planned our plastic waste collection drive as part of the Kooda Daan Abhiyaan campaign. Our waste collection e-vehicle that was decorated with colorful banners on waste segregation and fitted with a loud speaker motivating residents to come forward and donate their dry waste was ready for collection. On the day, the Aviral team along with the E-Rickshaw and municipal waste collection staff went door to door and collected dry waste stuffed in the HDPE bags which were earlier distributed to the households. All these efforts paid off when 131 households contributed a total of 109.5 kgs of segregated dry waste. And in the spirit of Bansant Panchami, participating households were gifted a paper kite in return for their waste. This initiative was highly welcomed by the residents, especially the little ones who could be seen beaming with joy over their colourful, new kites! 

The Kooda Daan Abhiyaan was very well received and appreciated by the residents of Ward no 20. Majority of the residents seemed aligned to Aviral’s objective of reducing plastic waste entering the Ganga and extended their support to segregate their waste going forward. The municipal waste workers who had collected segregated dry waste as part of this campaign appreciated the fact that they received segregated dry waste thereby saving them the effort and hazard of handling mixed waste.