A couple working on Sustainability, Waste solution and livelihood
December 7th , 2019 | Prashant Lingam
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Livelihood to rural and tribal artisans
Hello, I am Prashant and she is Aruna , we both are co-founders of a social enterprise named “Bamboo House India” established in the year 2006; we work with bamboo as a raw material and provide livelihoods to rural and tribal artisans. Our core focus area is address issues on the domain of livelihoods and environment. Till date we have constructed around 150 bamboo houses and now we want to expand this into building shelters with plastic waste.
In the year 2015 we ventured into waste management by making furniture with discarded tyres, drums and cycles and textiles and in the year 2017 we ventured into plastic waste with an aim of using plastic waste in making building materials and provide improved livelihoods to waste pickers in the process. Our main activity is to build shelters out of plastic waste.
Recycled Plastic House
Building house with Plastic Waste
We use MLP and LDPE for making shelters, we want to address the burning issue of plastic waste and homelessness and build livelihoods in the process. As we all know India generates nearly 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste daily and only 60% is recycled and remaining is lying on landfills, water bodies or remains uncollected. And to address this issue we initiated the project on building houses with plastic waste.
Today we have initiated a novel project of making kiosks/shelters with plastic waste in the state of Telangana, we are also building farm houses, pent houses, schools etc all with plastic waste. Apart from shelters we are also working on several building materials made using plastic waste.
Bamboo House
Banning plastic is not a solution
For our bamboo activities we work with artisans and for plastic waste projects we are working with Rag Pickers (safii sathis) and we are trying to ensure over the coming few years we are able to provide them with basic requirements like opening bank accounts, ID card, health and medical insurance etc as they are one of the most neglected citizens of our country doing a noble job of clearing our waste. We also are initiating a project of conducting year long session on plastic waste across schools, colleges and corporates as only behavioural changes can address the growing menace of plastic and banning plastic is not a solution.
Kitchen made with plastic
The author of the story is “Prashant Lingam" Co-founder of Bamboo House India and you can know more about to him at http://www.bamboohouseindia.org
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