What’s it going to cost you to ensure your daily garbage doesn’t hurt
the environment? Not much, if you call Bharani Kumar’s Pick-My-Basket
service. With bins and bags for people to dump their recyclable waste
and compostable waste separately, his small start-up is running their
own garbage disposal service for people in the city. The best part is
that they sort out stuff that can be recycled and hand it over to
professionals, while the other garbage is sent to a solid waste
management unit.

After quitting his banking job, Bharani came up
with this design of a garbage bin that enables household to segregate
garbage at the source by putting them in different coloured bags. While
this is an old system by itself, the difference here is that the
disposal part is handled by Bharani’s staff and not the Corporation.

After
floating the idea, he then approached his surrounding residential
apartments in Mogappair and offered to provide these bins with the
accessories to the households on a monthly subscription. Though he
started this company with his own effort in August 2012, he could
officially start the service only in February 2013 with 17 patrons.
Slowly, through word of mouth the message spread to other places and
now, he heaves a sigh of relief that the business is offering service to
more than 300 apartments.

Every alternate day his field
executives reach their assigned destination after intimating the
households through SMS and collect garbage bags from each house. One
thing which they make sure is that the garbage bags should be closed
with the plastic locks which they provide them every month. “It is very
important that garbage should not be open. So we provide plastic locks
along with the carry bags and insist people to close the bags and hand
them over to the executives. Also the vehicles in which we carry garbage
are closed unlike the garbage trucks in the city,” he said.

Initially,
the plan was to dump the garbage in either Perungudi or Kodungaiyur
dump yard for which he got permission from the corporation by paying
them an advance. He even recalls his first visit to the Perungudi dump
yard carrying totally 17 bags to dump. “When I reached there, the
officer literally laughed at me for travelling all the way to perungudi
to dump just 17 bags of garbage. He then told that the garbage must
weigh minimum half ton to bring it directly to dump yard,” laughed
Bharani.

As an alternative, he decided to have the waste processed
at the Exnora Green Pammal, where there is a Vermicompost plant to
convert the compostable wastes into manures and fertilisers. On an
average, the total amount of waste collected from various apartments in
seven places like Moggapair, Anna Nagar, Kilpauk, Porur, Velachery and
Chithlapakkam accounts to 350 kg per day and 5 tonnes per month.

“We
travel to Kilpauk to collect garbage from just one house but we are
absolutely fine with it because we hope to reach many other people
through the noble service we provide,” he said.

On his radar now
are replacing the metal in trash cans with wood to make it more
environmental friendly. He also plans to replace the black bags with
compostable bags, which are right now twice as expensive as plastics.

Bharani’s
vision is bigger and greener in all sense and he aims to spread this
cause to create a garbage free Chennai city with little help from the
government. “If the corporation or state could support us, we shall make
Chennai a bin free city. Particularly, there should be no landfills. In
five years we shall converts these dump yards to composting malls and
recycling parks for the amount spent by the state for handling solid
waste,” said Bharani with a ‘contented’ smile.

Interested persons
can register through the website: www.pickmybasket.net or contact
through email: lifespace_environs@yahoo.com. Contact: 9500051681

fully loaded

•   50-litre metal caravan with a capacity to hold garbage of two days
•   Two compartments separated by a partition – recyclable waste, compostable waste
•   Separate metal lids for each compartment
•   Side handles for easy portability
•   Wheels attached to the base for easy mobility
•   Clear list of objects (with images) to be thrown in each compartment is
  listed on the lid, so that   it becomes easy for anybody to understand
•   Green carry bag provided for recyclable waste
•   Black carry bag provided for compostable waste
•   A plastic tapered lock provided with for each carry bag to close the garbage before disposal