In India, in the city of Ambikapur, an idea was born as simple as it is brilliant: the Garbage Cafè, rooms in which you do not pay with the rupees but with plastic waste. Bringing 1 kilo of waste, anyone can sit at the table and receive a full meal composed of rice, two curry, from, bread and salad.
A double benefit for community and environment
The project solves two problems at the same time: on the one hand it supports those with economic difficulties by offering hot food, on the other it reduces the dispersion of plastic in the urban environment. Ambikapur, located in the state of Chhattisgarh, is known as the “city without landfills“, A primacy obtained thanks to innovative strategies like this.
Intelligent waste management
The city produces about 226 tons of plastic per day, most of which is already recycled. The Garbage Cafè intervene to recover that part that would risk escaping the official circuits. People, collecting abandoned bottles and wraps, can thus guarantee daily meals to their family, transforming waste into a real resource.
Comparison with traditional collection
Before the opening of these premises, the informal collectors sold plastic to local recyclators for a few pennies: 10 rupees per kilo (0.096 euros), a figure that often was not enough to guarantee even a plate of food. With the Garbage Cafè, however, the same quantity of plastic translates into a nourishing meal, offering dignity and relief to those who live in precarious conditions.
Behind this initiative there is the Ambikapur Municipal Corporation (AMC), a public management body that operates as a company, with the aim of guaranteeing services that would depend on a traditional municipal office elsewhere. According to the manager Vinod Patel, every day the Garbage Cafè serves about 20 people, thus collecting 20 kilos of plastic which otherwise would be dispersed in the environment.
A model that makes school
Ambikapur is not limited to these special restaurants: the city has developed a door -to -door collection system that involves about 50,000 women, creating employment and drastically reducing the production of not managed waste. The success of the model also inspired other cities, in India and even abroad: even in Cambodia the concept of Garbage Cafè was replied.
A kilo of bottles and bags may seem little, but in this Indian city it is equivalent to much more than a meal: it represents a concrete step towards a circular economy, in which waste becomes resources and solidarity meets sustainability.
Posted by apna Ambikapur on Wednesday, July 20, 2022
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