Team Shield is working on environmental awareness campaigns since 2009. And in 2011 our team won Earth hour award sponsored by HT and WWF. With that money we did a small solar awareness project in Jagdamba camp Sheikh Sarai and raised awareness on solar energy at number of places .
SHIELD,s WoW Delhi team (women of Wards) started working on No Polybag campaign in 2012 with vendors of patri bazar in South Delhi,but due to lack of availability of options and a weak govt policy the project slowed down as paperbags were not successful and people by and large never carried a shopping bag ,but neverthless admitted to its need.
In 2015 started working with women in three different areas of Delhi.The project involved buying of waste cloth of factories and making cloth bags of assorted sizes.The idea was to generate sustainable income for ladies who do not venture out of houses ,in Indian marriages a girl is gifted with a sewing machine and for us it became easy to find ladies with skill for stitching.We noticed that even a meagre income of forty ,fifty rupees made a huge difference to them.Our project slowed down as we were not able to market cloth bags even at a low price of Rs 5 or 10/- The project was in Sangam vihar ,Pulprehladpur and Shahadra.
We set out thinking as to where do people require polybags ? it was majorly for buying vegetables and then for waste disposal.So the idea to reduce requirement for polybags one needed to manage wet kitchen waste which is 70% of total household waste.Surprisingly we saw a total saving on requirement of garbage bags for lining bins. This led to birth of our movement Harit Kachra Kranti !The project was successfully taken up with residents of Masjid mothDDA Flats phase1 . A small project of composting jointly by block people was successful which led us to install compost bins for neighborhood in the parks. We have installed three bins in the colony and the garbage collector has been educated on collecting kitchen waste seperately. It is an uphill task to educate the educated to segregate waste. On similar lines one bin has been installed in Sangam vihar L1 gali number 18 .Volunteers are giving small candy boxes for keeping kitchen waste to residents.Children are going house to house educating residents and collecting funds for compost bins. One bin was installed in Gandhi peace foundation today for composting kitchen waste, the sweeper Nitin was the happiest ! it meant less work for him.
Success of project would depend on raising awareness on new scientific ways of composting ,giving cheap readily available options for managing waste. The awareness has been received very positively by garbage lifters as it means they make money out of each bit of waste they collect wet or dry, added advantage is cleaner working conditions for them.
We have already got requests for installation of bins in Safdarjung enclave on trial basis. By applying collective wisdom we can overcome challanges we may face in achieving our mission of cleaner ,healthier and happier world.The quest for solutions continues.........
Thanks and regards
Ranju Minhas
Founder
