Location : 11 villages in Orohalli, Hoskote taluk, Bengaluru rural

Saahas is working with Juniper networks under the AshaKirana project since October 2017. The Waste Management program under AshaKirana project is an effort to provide a solution to disposal of dry waste in the villages. The key components of this program are : door-to-door awareness, source segregation of waste by the residents, weekly collection of dry waste, storage and sorting in shed provided by the Panchayat, sale of recyclables and routing on non-recyclables to cement factories. This leads to maximum resource recovery from waste and no dumping of waste resulting in visibly cleaner villages. We are currently working with panchayat to make the program sustainable. The project bagged a CSR Sustainability award at the 6th CSR conference from Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad.

Key interventions under the project are:

• Before the intervention, there were 162 black spots (where the waste regularly gets dumped) and now it has gradually reduced to 50, due to the project
• Dumping and littering of waste reduced by 80%.
• 70 M Tons of non recyclable waste has been sent to ACC cements for co-processing.
• Cleanliness drives conducted through local people and volunteers of Juniper Networks.
• Conducted survey and awareness sessions on sanitary waste for Asha workers, Self help groups and adolescent girls and distributed cloth pads to some of them as an alternative for disposable pads and received a good feedback from users.
• User fee collection has started, around 35% of the HH’s & Shops are paying user fees. This will support the panchayat to run the waste management program on a sustainable model.
• Neighbouring panchayats of Doddanalala and Samethanahalli, Devanahalli taluk PDOs (from 34 GPs) and Gram Vikas NGO visited Orohalli GP for exposure visits, to know about the program