Waste Ventures India has established a formalized market for waste streams which averts waste from landfill and creates higher incomes for the waste pickers, with standardized prices with upfront payments. They purchase and segregate dry and wet waste from third-party waste pickers, corporates and apartment complexes, and process it to sell to recyclers.
Interview footage kindly filmed by Azimut Social Business https://vimeo.com/azimutcompany
Since the 1980s, pioneers like Bill Drayton, Muhammad Yunus and Anita Roddick have led through action, creating powerful examples of business solutions to societal or environmental issues. They called it social business, social entrepreneurship or impact entrepreneurship.
Naveen was born and raised in a small village outside Varanasi in Northern India. All his life, he grew up around manual rickshaw drivers carrying people to and from the city, it’s backbreaking work for very little pay. He saw that very often the rickshaw cyclists came from some of the most vulnerable communities, frequently associated with drug and alcohol abuse.
Social-business entrepreneur Roshan Miranda saw an opportunity to address the environmental challenges of waste recycling while also improving the livelihoods of waste pickers. He co-founded Waste Ventures India, a social business that works with waste pickers to boost their income and India’s recycling efforts.