The other day when I was browsing the web about waste management, I was left in awe when I learned about Nivedha and her innovative start-up TrashCon, which aims at solving waste management woes in India.
Nivedha was in her third year of chemical engineering at Bengaluru’s R V College of Engineering when she was featured in the headlines of a local magazine. A lane was completely filled with waste and the local people were at great discomfort. Unable to stay unbothered, Nivedha along with a group of friends took the initiative to clean the lane piled with rotting waste.
“We saw people scrunching their noses and complaining about the unbearable stench and how the area was becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes. They couldn’t even keep their windows open. Yet, no one wanted to change anything. We decided to clear the area. Though it garnered us a lot of praise, it was heartbreaking to see the area dumped with the same amount of waste in less than a week.” says Nivetha while recollecting about the incident. However, she quickly understood that they have only provided the people with an ephemeral aid but not a permanent solution. Soon, she visited the local Municipal Corporation office, asking why action wasn’t taken and was inturn asked by the officials if it was worth clearing the area when people are not ready to segregate their waste in the first place. This led her to look at the root cause of the problem which was the mixing up of all kinds of waste. Recalling the experience she said, “In one bag of waste, you can find a diaper, plastic-laden sambar and a dead rat. How can anyone make any value of waste mixed to this degree? So, it lands up being dumped and burned in front of our homes.”
A door-to-door awareness session about segregation made her aware of the flaws in the waste collection system. She has conducted extensive literature surveys into the current technology for waste segregation.
This desire to make things better in case of waste management led Nivedha through a journey which ultimately resulted in inventing Trashbot, a semi-automatic waste segregator that could segregate waste within minutes. Trashbot starts at Rs 9 lakh and the price varies on capacities. Societies can process their waste and connect it to a biogas plant or composting unit. The gas can be used for cooking purposes, while compost in the gardens. Plus, they can sell the non-biodegradable waste and generate revenue as well.
“I started ideating in 2016. Over six months, I built a small system. The principle leveraged the major difference between biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste—the moisture content. While biodegradable waste has 90 percent moisture, non-biodegradable waste has at least 40 percent moisture” says Nivedha
After building a prototype, a 1-kg waste processing model, she decided to scale it up to a 50-kg-per-hour model. But she lacked funds.
This led her to apply for Elevate 100, a flagship program by the Karnataka Government that recognizes the top 100 innovative startups and funds them.
This was also the time when her final results were out, and she had secured the 9th place. A secure future was awaiting Nivedha, but her mother strongly suggested that she continue her toil for a better environment.
The resulting 50-kg-per-hour prototype from the Elevate 100 funding was installed in an apartment complex with 150 homes. It gave her insights about possible issues like overloading and how unskilled labor could affect the efficiency of the machine.
The company is now working with industry biggie, Pidilite, which helps the boards reach carpenters. This has already found a huge market not just in India but even in Canada, Australia, and the USA. Their next big project is in collaboration with the Airports Authority of India where Trashcon will be processing waste for the Chennai Airport. The execution will take place in the next four months.
Very soon, the TrashCon team will be interacting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss their product. TrashCon currently works with 5 state governments in India to eliminate the waste menace. With plans to expand its services to other developing countries, with each one servicing about 10,000 houses within a radius of about 3 to 4 miles, TrashCon is making new strides in the area of waste management.
