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Meet Suresh Kumar

of Gopalan Royal Palms,
a 135 Flats residential complex in
L B Shastri Nagar, HAL in Bangalore
Phone :9845664283

He doesn’t like waste. So he has spearheaded a commendable effort to move his complex to
become as close to zero waste as possible.

The kick-off

Suresh went to each of the 10 apartments and met each family and enrolled them into this eco initiative. They wholeheartedly supported this initiative and agreed to do waste segregation in their houses and follow the set process.

The actual programme details

The first step is to create the mechanism for waste segregation.
Suresh has set the standard of

This is deposited outside each flat for collection
by the housekeeping staff (total 6 are employed by the complex)

The housekeeping staff carry the buckets to the Leave-it Pots and empty them out into the Leave-it Pots and wash the buckets at the waste point before returning the buckets to the individual flats

The housekeeping staff carry the buckets to the Leave-it Pots and empty them out into the Leave-it Pots and wash the buckets at the waste point before returning the buckets to the individual flats

The gardener adds dried leaves to the Leave-it pots and stirs occasionally. After 10 weeks they turn into rich organic compost to be used as manure for plants.

Once a week a local Scrap dealer (Kabadiwala) comes to collect the accumulated dry waste and weighs them to determine scrap value. Suresh settles accounts with him once a month. In the first 6 weeks they were able to earn Rs.470/- from the dried waste collected from these 10 homes.

The challenges

The first pilot lot of 10 families who agreed to be part of this effort also were uncomfortable keeping the steel buckets back into their kitchen. The perception is that once a container has been outside and handled in conditions you are not in control of, then its not hygienic to bring it back to your kitchen since that space holds some sanctity.

Also if your steel container goes out, you want the very same container back, you don’t want your neighbour’s container. So Suresh had to label the lids and the bottoms to ensure that was to happen. He then hit the next hurdle, the housekeeping staff could not read, so they would mix up the lids and the bottoms. So he had to start a literacy programme for the staff.

The next move

Identified the next 20 houses in own apartment and gradually roll out to the entire 135 flats. With the help of a local social welfare association called Uthkarsh, this initiative was showcased in the recent Republic Day celebration in the locality representing some 14 apartments having 800 flats. Already one of the apartments, Sarovar have adopted composting using waste segregation and there is focused effort from Uthkarsh to get it adaopted by other 12 apartments. He is also actively working with Saahas, an NGO working towards better waste management to spread across in other areas of Bangalore.