New Delhi: The day is not far away when ‘Garden City’ of India, Bengaluru will turn into a garbage city and drowns in its own garbage. The city generates close to 3,500 tonnes of waste daily and within the next 10 years, this number will rise to 13,000 tonnes if garbage generation from bulk generators is not checked. Concerned about the rising number, Naveen Mariyan, a 27-year-old entrepreneur from Bengaluru decided to work towards managing the waste and in turn save the environment and ease the burden on landfills.
Talking to NDTV about how he started his career and got into waste management Naveen, founder of Khalibottle says,
Naveen Mariyan
Back in 2013, I started my first venture called Plate Up caterers, but unfortunately had to close it down in 2015. As Henry Ford says, ‘Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again’. I didn’t lose any hope, as now I had experience and knowledge about business and had an opportunity to start afresh. I worked for a year and side by side focused on my next venture Project ReUse (now Khalibottle) and finally launched it on December 5, 2016.
The idea was to reuse and to get a better picture of that Naveen did an intensive research and interacted with scrap merchants, recycling dealers, distributors, logistic partners.
What does Khalibottle do?
Khalibottle acts as an online scrap merchant, helping the society to recycle more of their waste and earn from it. From newspapers, empty glass bottles, paper, books, magazines, plastic, cardboard to steel, iron and brass, the team purchases anything which can be recycled and give cash or coupons in exchange of it.
Empty glass bottles collected
How does Khalibottle works?
Individual or corporate houses wishing to sell of the scrap can visit the website or connect with Khalibottle team and request for the pickup of recyclable waste. Once the request is raised, the team will confirm the pickup and reach at the given address at the mentioned time with digital weighing scale. The team will collect the waste and pay the customer in cash or coupon as per the quantity of the waste. Individuals can also donate for the cause by just giving the trash.
Paper waste collected from different sources
What happens with the waste collected?
Once the trash is collected from different individuals, corporates and events, it is segregated as per different categories like paper, bottle, steel, etc, packed and then sent for recycling to different locations.
We not only provide a good price for the waste, but also eliminate the role of middlemen in the process of recycling the product, says Naveen.
Currently, Khalibottle is operating from two warehouses in north Bengaluru and covers around 15 locations. As of now, the team has collected and recycled more than 124 tonnes of trash in Bengaluru alone. Not only is this, the team plans to open up an offline store where one can drop in the waste and get money in return.
The idea is to create awareness among people about recycling and stop the recyclable waste from going to landfills. Landfills in India are already dying under the burden of ever rising waste generated by us. If we can save a portion of waste from going to landfills then why not?, Naveen signs off with a question to ponder upon.
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