<aside> 💕 Project Pavitra Parvat: In Hindi, Pavitra Parvat (पवित्र पर्वत) means ‘holy hills’. It is an ode to the profound love and reverence we have for the hills and the lives they harbor.
The city of Dehradun is housed at the foothills of the great Himalayan mountain ranges. Over the last few decades, its pristine environment has been devastated by rampant plastic pollution, affecting the Himalayan ecosystem and contaminating ravines and valleys. We dream of returning the city and its ecosystem to its original dream-like beauty, helping it recover, rejuvenate, and thrive.
This Impact Project is our effort to stop landfill-bound plastic waste from polluting the areas in the capital city of India's Uttarakhand state and to restore our natural environment to the peaceful, pure state it was once in.
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<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/0dd1ba1f-0b35-4dd2-90b2-9974ad3c8d87/2.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/0dd1ba1f-0b35-4dd2-90b2-9974ad3c8d87/2.png" width="40px" /> Project Type: Collection of low-value plastic (LVP)
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<aside> 📍 Location: Dehradun, India
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<aside> ☘️ # of waste workers: 20+
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https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dehradun,+Uttarakhand,+India/@30.3254098,77.9470944,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x390929c356c888af:0x4c3562c032518799!8m2!3d30.3164945!4d78.0321918?hl=en-US
<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/dc9f0093-5576-4b17-ab67-db220342fcd8/Untitled_design_(11).png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/dc9f0093-5576-4b17-ab67-db220342fcd8/Untitled_design_(11).png" width="40px" /> Without your help, the plastic waste that we recover through this project would have ended up in landfills around Dehradun.
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Project Pavitra Parvat is a vital initiative by rePurpose Global to tackle the pressing issue of plastic waste mismanagement in Dehradun, a district at the foothills of the Himalayas. Dehradun generates around 10-12 tons of plastic waste daily and a significant portion of this is either littered or burned, which is a major concern.
More than 50% of the plastic waste generated in urban cities of India is multi-layered plastic (MLP) that does not get collected because the material has no commercial value and lacks collection infrastructure. This includes soft, flexible types of packaging such as candy wrappers and chips packets. The most at risk are those that have multiple layers of plastic along with a metal coating inside, since it is almost impossible to separate the materials out in order to recycle them.
Often, in urban centers, harder types of plastic like PET that are easier to recycle, have a recovery rate of over 60-70% because of its inherent economic value. However, low-value materials like MLP have a recovery rate of less than 5%, and are most likely to leak into the natural environment and pollute our waterways.
The challenging terrain and remoteness of villages add to the difficulty of establishing waste management systems.
Project Pavitra Parvat aims to overcome these challenges by establishing holistic waste management supply chains to ensure that all plastic waste generated in the region is ethically collected and responsibly managed.
In partnership with Waste Warriors India, one of India's most trusted waste management enterprises, we are working to ensure that waste workers receive a liveable wage for recovering MLP, LDPE and LVP from our environment that would have otherwise been dumped in overflowing landfills or would have polluted the forests of Uttarakhand. MLP is used to make everything from chip packaging to candy wrappers.
Following the collection, the waste workers segregate, clean, and transport the plastic to their end destinations. The LDPE is sent for recycling to board making facility while the MLP is sent to cement kilns for co-processing.
By establishing public-private partnerships and empowering waste workers, the project creates dignified and formal livelihoods for the waste workers and ensures that all plastic waste generated is collected and responsibly managed through its Material Recovery Facility. Pavitra Parvat also collaborates with Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in the region and incentivizes the collection of low-value plastics by engaging with informal waste collectors.
For every piece of plastic that rePurpose Global gives you credit for, it is a piece of plastic that would otherwise not have been removed from our ecosystems.
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