Tech-Savvy Kabadiwala
Waste management activities in India is a serious topic for a debate. More than 99% of the products we buy include packaging and other material which is trashed within few months and majority of this waste is solid in nature. Let’s talk about some disastrous materials we are always surrounded with such as paper, plastic, glass bottles, old metal objects ( brass, iron, aluminium, tungsten, copper, etc.) and much more if you go inside a deeper classification of solid or recyclable waste.
In metropolitan cities, the solid waste is multiplying in million tons every day. More than 90% of the solid waste is disposed of into landfills or open lands. These landfills have eventually grown into a trash mountain and sometimes catches. Many times due to dis-proportional disposal of waste it catches fire in the pile of garbage & causes dangerous fire hazards. Neighbourhood close to landfills are always covered with dense toxic smog & hence pollutes the entire city with the air flow of Suspended Particulate Matter.
In todays busy like people hardly find time to manage their household waste generation and throw it away. Most of the items thrown can be recycled or down cycled if it goes to the correct place. In most of the metros we have online scrap dealers now and they are doing s good job but to understand the waste management completely we really need to lookup to the traditional Kabadiwalas.
Kabadiwala’s or scrap dealers in India are the real warriors, who are fighting back the mounting problems of waste management in India to keep everything under control. Many of us don’t know the simple process of waste segregation, but a Kabadiwala understands it well, and also execute it in his everyday life. They do a tremendous job of environmental value. According to a conceptual survey, around 30% of the solid waste is collected and segregated by Kabadiwala alone. Most of them thrive hard to gather an income of 10,000-15000 Rs. per month. Somehow the digitization of waste management sector overlooked the traditional kabadiwala.
A Startup based out of New Delhi, Junkart, has been a successful instigator in aligning the traditional Kabadiwala’s to a digital space to make these overcrowded cities look greener & cleaner and to help traditional scrap vendors to get a huge customer base.
Junkart launched a highly interactive & tested Mobile App to connect households/offices with nearby Kabadiwala’s to collect more trash & give back cash in exchange.
Junkart is an initiative, which targets to gather scrap/recyclable solid waste from households, institutes, corporates, etc. to maximize the percentage of waste collection, for the sole purpose of recycling. It has introduced an online platform for traditional Kabadiwala to join the digital marketplace so that the much of the solid waste is collected & shredded for the sake of recycling.
A user visits & raises an online pickup request from the website/mobile App and then logistics application permits a scrap vendor/Kabadiwala to complete the waste pickup from the doorstep of the customer. Few clicks interface makes scrap/waste pickup hassle free for customers.
More than 10,000 customers have used this portal in Delhi/NCR & Gurgaon. Mobile Application is configured with scrap reminder, to alarm customers with a notification to sell their solid waste twice a month.
And the heart winning slogan is Ab India “ Feko Nahi Becho”.
Thanks to Junkart for bringing online waste management in India. Giving them a digital platform will boom the scrap & waste management industry.