<aside> 💕 Project Sada Shakti (सदा शक्ति): In Hindi, Sada Shakti (सदा शक्ति) means Eternal Courage. It takes courage to create change and turn the tide. This Impact Project is our effort to stop nature-bound plastic waste from polluting the rural areas of India's southern state of Karnataka and to return our natural environment to the peaceful, luscious 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 (MLP)
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<aside> 📍 Location: Bangalore, India
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<aside> ☘️ # of waste workers: 60
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https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bengaluru,+Karnataka,+India/@12.9538477,77.3507442,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x3bae1670c9b44e6d:0xf8dfc3e8517e4fe0!8m2!3d12.9715987!4d77.5945627
<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 the Greater Bengaluru area.
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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 their 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 become pollutants.
Through Project Sada Shakti (सदा शक्ति), we are catalyzing the collection and ethical processing of low-value, soft plastic packaging waste (MLP) that would have otherwise been dumped in overflowing and hazardous landfills. MLP is used to make everything from chip packaging to candy wrappers.
In partnership with Saahas Zero Waste, one of India's oldest and most trusted waste management enterprises, this project actualizes the collection and ethical disposal of MLP waste. Following the collection of MLP, waste workers segregate, clean, and transport the plastic to cement kilns for co-processing. As this type of plastic cannot be recycled, the best environmental option, as prescribed by the United Nations Basel Convention, is co-processing. Energy is recovered from the plastic and the remaining waste is effectively disposed of without harmful emissions. We are also able to extract some of the minerals in the plastic waste and use them in the creation of cement. Not only does this initiative dispose of unrecyclable plastic waste without sending them to landfills or river dumpsites, but also reduces the usage of coal in the cement manufacturing process, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Project Sada Shakti (सदा शक्ति) engages with an informal workers’ settlement on the outskirts of Bangalore to not only address previously uncollected, problematic plastics but also transform the lives of its 700+ residents. In particular, this impact project helps provide education, electricity, insurance, and health & sanitation facilities to women waste workers and their children.
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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