Nochikuppam Zero waste model expanding; Join hands!!

Dear all,

As you know as a CTCian and green warrior, bad solid waste mgmt is causing various issues for sanitation, disease, environment, human(rag pickers), harm to animals. Please take time to look at this video we made highlighting each issue.

Hence CTC has been involved in making a model zero waste community at Nochikuppam slum clearance board tenements near Marina beach Light house last many months. The team here is working 4 to 5 sessions every week and needs lots of support to speed up the war against waste in Nochikuppam and in Chennai. Please register using the below form to volunteer during weekday morning/evening and weekend as per your availability.

We have successfully stabilised the door collection and segregation at the 160 homes A block overcoming the various challenges of workers, infrastructure, sanitation, thin plastics disposal and segregation with active support of the 24 member resident ladies committee that we helped form. Now we are also educating kids, mulling self employment for the ladies in the eco friendly products space - volunteering scope has really enlarged due to the interest of CTCians getting involved.

Now we are in the all important expansion phase to cover all the 800 homes in the community to make it fully zero waste and garbage bin free. Once done we would have reduced nearly half a ton waste daily from landfills and saved Rs.25k per month for Chennai Corporation in transportation alone. Environment impact is much higher.

The below chart highlights the enormity of the solid waste challenge. Though our initial struggle may be difficult, once it catches up it will for sure spread like wild fire. Segregating is so good and so easy and solves so much.

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Our financial commitment to Nochikuppam is minimal compared to our time, knowledge and passion. We contribute only for buying trolley and initial funding of workers salaries. Almost the whole cost of 2bin1bag segregation kits per home is borne whole heartedly by the low income residents paying Rs.100 each.

Our work is greatly recognised by the Corporation higher officials and supported by Ramky too with a tricycle for our own use. Corporation is revamping and greatly increasing the capacity of the Mylapore burial ground compost yard that we started using. Biogas plant is also on the anvil, we hear.

Here I have listed the various regular tasks that we need help with and the coordinators. Please choose based on your interest and availability.

Date / Time	Task	Connect to Coordinators on FB
Weekly tasks
Saturday & Sunday 10 AM to 1 PM	Sensitizing the residents about various issues of sanitation, disease, environmental, human(rag pickers), harm to animals and distributing kits	Sanchana / Pradeepa / Ashok / Naveen
	Kids engagement thru Eco club	Ironman Sri
Tuesday & Thursday 6:30 to 8:30 PM	Sensitizing and distributing, Committee meeting, fix infrastructure, manage workers	Purush / Sathya / Avinash
Wednesday 6:30 to 7:30 AM	Compost yard mgmt and turning	Shyam / Purush
Other tasks
NA	Tamil Posters design, Videos	Dilip / Prashanth
Sundays	Tree plantation around each block	Suresh / Saravanan
Weekdays	Govt and Media communication	Prabha / Surendhar

The saying "Solutions cannot be scaled, but the number of problem solvers can be scaled" holds very true for zero waste model. The more the no. of us supporting the efforts, the faster the end to landfills and the waste menace.

FB page for regular updates: www.facebook.com/zerokuppai

Resources and details about the work at: www.zerokuppai.in

Contact points: 

Ashok - 93825 77264; Purush - 9940074968;

Sathya - 9790981671; Naveen - 9962716514;