A waste management project aims to clean-up India’s hill cities

The organisation is on a mission to build better models of plastic waste management in India’s tourist cities

Spotted: Project Hilldaari, one of the leading plastic waste management projects running across India, has organised clean up drives across 4 hill cities in celebration of its third Anniversary. The event coincided with the UN’s International Mountain Day and aimed to promote no littering and responsible waste disposal practices among residents.

The clean up drives were carried out in the four hill cities of Mussoorie, Nainital, Dalhousie, and Mahabaleshwar. Almost 200 people were involved, collecting 1,592 kilogrammes of dry waste. The collected waste was then sold to recyclers for further processing.

Project Hilldaari receives support from Nestlé India, Stree Mukti Sangathan, and Recity Network Pvt. Ltd. It is currently operational in six cities (Mussoorie, Nainital, Dalhousie, Mahabaleshwar, Ponda and Munnar), and has educated three and half thousand residents on the importance of waste segregation and no-littering behaviour. Project Hilldaari has also professionalised over five hundred waste workers across these cities and estimates to have facilitated the diversion of 15,070 metric tonnes of waste from landfills.

Hills are specifically targeted for waste disposal due to the inflow of tourists. Clean-up in hills also presents unique challenges compared to clean-up in plains.

Vaibhav Patel from Hilldaari Dalhousie said “You need to climb down to slopes sometimes tying ropes to the bellies, taking all the necessary precautions including use of modern equipment. When people see this and become a part of the process, there is a new found respect they feel for our waste workers who do this on a regular basis. When people commit not to litter, that makes our day.”

The organisation has released a short film, viewable on Youtube, about the impact it’s had on people’s lives since it began its operation three years ago.

Recent innovations spotted by Springwise that focus on waste management include a new ‘litter lotto’, and an app that gamifies litter collection.