Waste-not

"One man's waste is another man's Treasure..."

Presentation

Problem:

• Every household generates organic and inorganic wastes regularly.
• But not everyone is able to dispose it well
• Not every city has proper waste management system set up
• Most people resort to burning of wastes which causes pollution and breathing related problems
• Even though recyclable facilities are available, they may often be far from the user's homes or the common man may be unaware of them
• Some local waste collectors comes occasionally to collect paper or metal scraps, but often they may arrive when the user is not at home or is ready to stack up the waste and deliver to them.

Our Idea

A full stack portal with both mobile and web app for the common man to easily get his waste collected and disposed properly using a subscription based model while earning reward coupons and offers in the process! Additionally, other customers can browse our app for buying waste/scrap which may be useful to them(eg: An old TV may be a scrap to one, but may be extremely useful for an electronics person to reuse parts; or organic waste from hotels may be very valuable for a farmer or a gardner ). Any interested volunteer can come forward and act as collectors or delivery agents to collect wastes from one user and deliver them to recycling factories or other user in return for a commission.

Process Flow

• The common household user can use our application to sign up and create a dispose request form in which some information on the waste he wants to dispose along with his location, and preferred collection slot is mentioned.
• The request appears to all delivery personnel in the nearby locations from which they can take up the request if they are available in the preferred time.
• The delivery personnel goes to the user's household, takes up the segregated waste items, pays the user the money which is mentioned in our site as per the current exchange and pricing rates.
• The delivery person, then comes to our factory, where the waste is exchanged for a delivery price(similar to how the local Aakri peron acts as an intermediary to deliver wastes to factories).
• The wastes brought in are put up in our website from where other recycling factories or farmers or artists or gardeners or anyone else can buy them at a cheaper rate quite easily.
• Other delivery personnel will have these second hand parts delivered to their households at the click of a button in their app.

Revenue Model

Everyone wants to dispose of their wastes. People will be more than willing to use our service if they can be assured of getting some rewards in the process. We collect properly segregated wastes and have them advertised in our apps for others to buy them cheaply. We act as an intermediary in this process and thus revenue is generated. We share our profits with delivery personnel much like how Swiggy and Zomato does for food delivery business. Our difference is that we have delivery in both ways, for collecting wastes and then for having them delivered to interested parties. Additionally, we would have a subscription based service model where we collect wastes weekly or in alternate days from households and hotels and have them delivered periodically to other customers (eg: A farm or a gardening agency would prefer to have organic waste matter be delivered every day continuously). This would ensure a steady flow of income and hence the delivery personnel could be rewarded regularly as well.

Future Plans of Action

• Have more delivery facilities open in all major cities facing a waste disposal problems where volunteers/collectors can drop in the wastes collected from various households.
• Explain the benefits of our apps to the existing local Aakri persons and let them use our app so that they could easily find out which all households have scraps that are willing to be sold. This would save them the hassle of going to every household in an area and asking if they have scraps to be sold. They could then deliver these scraps at our factories and get paid.

Inspiration behind the idea:

Waste disposal is one of the prime issues faced by India. Those realising the same and disposing waste are not getting recognized. Hence we felt the need to do something for such volunteers. In a state like Kerala, it is commonly seen in the news about how wastes are getting piled up in places like Brahmapuram and how fires over there takes days to be put out. We believe that our idea could be used to connect the segregated wastes from common households to the recycling factories while creating value for the delivery personnel and local aakri people and hence is a sustainable way to reduce and slowly eliminate the waste accumulation problem of our state.

Social Relevance:

• Clean, healthy and safe neighborhoods.
• Increases the quality of lifestyle and also attract foreigners to visit.
• Minimize air pollution due to the burning of wastes which is very common in places without a proper waste disposal system
• Create value by providing a source of income to delivery personnel which they can take up as a part time job or whenever they are free.

Environmental Impacts:

• Improve the quality of Environment.
• Sustainable source of waste disposal

Steps to run locally:

• clone the repo
• use 2 terminals
• run cd waste-not on both
• run cd backend in one terminal
• run npm install on both terminals
• run npm run start on both terminals