Davanagere

Milk Packet Campaign: Ward no.32

Davangere is a city in the centre of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, also known for being a cotton hub and hence popularly known as the Manchester of Karnataka.

Initiatives

In 2019 Hasiru Dala conducted a survey along with the coordination of Davangere city corporation and regarding the milk plastic cover waste disposal and the practices being followed by the mass population to properly dispose or recycle the used milk covers.

Survey

  • According to the survey, 1 lakh litres of milk and milk products are sold in Davangere district. There was no proper awareness as to properly dispose of the covers so that they can be recycled later for the consumer. Therefore almost all of these covers were sent to landfills along with garbage where ragpickers would collect only around 5% of all the milk (clean) plastic covers.
  • Based on this survey, Hasiru Dala Davangere successfully convinced the Davangere city corporation and KMF Shivamogga and KMF supported by providing the recycling bins, and the Davangere city corporation supported by providing banners, posters, T-shirts and garbage collection carts.

Inauguration

The Awareness Campaign was held in the city in collaboration with Davangere City corporation to raise public awareness on 3R(Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) was started on 15.08.2022 by placing the recycle bins provided by KMF in all milk parlours in the ward and the apartments to throw the used milk covers in the bins, the recyclable used milk covers collected were not up to the expected level for which we had to come up with other strategies to make this effective.

We had to improve our strategy by making the segregation of milk covers at the level of door to door and also we educated citizens on dry waste and wet waste segregation by going door to door along with the garbage collection carts. As a result of which the recycling of the milk covers improved on a huge scale and a daily basis, there is a collection of 4-5 kgs of milk covers ( IT requires approximately 106 milk covers to get the weight of 1kg).

Impact

Dry and wet waste segregation has progressed up to 95% in ward no 32 as reported by the city corporation because of the above activity the city corporation has encouraged us to bring the same progress in the remaining 44 wards in the city and has also provided us with a team of 14 members to support us in the campaign. From last two months Total: 325 kg Milk covers collected in DWCC-34,450 Milk covers-avoiding going to Landfill site.

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