Cheela Mela - Providing an alternative to plastic bags and reducing textile waste

NT Correspondent
Bengaluru

As part of the plastic-free July drive, an awareness campaign was carried out at the Madiwala Vegetable Market to make it an eco-friendly space. Different stakeholders like BBMP staff, marshalls, supervisors, local residents participated in the event. The objective was to raise awareness for conserving the environment by reducing the usage of disposable plastics and also to get a new shape for their old clothes thereby reducing textile waste.

The event ‘Cheela Mela’ (bag festival) organised by Saahas in collaboration with BBMP, aims to promote the use of cloth bags among market-goers. The public was encouraged to bring their old, unusable clothes and get them stitched into cloth bags by the tailors from SHG present at different locations in the market. They were also urged to carry the cloth bags whenever they went vegetable shopping.

Saahas team also interacted with the vendors in the market to raise awareness about the single-use plastic ban and informed them to stop handing out plastic bags to their customers. The team also educated the crowd about the ill-effects of singleuse plastics and plastic bags.

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has partnered with GIZ India, which is a German Development Agency, and Saahas to implement the NAMA Facility project titled ‘Circular Waste Solutions’. The nodal ministries for the project are the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).

‘Circular Waste Solutions’ is focused on promoting low carbon circular economy solutions in Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) with the support of the NAMA (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action) Facility. The NAMA Facility is jointly supported by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) of the United Kingdom (UK), The Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities (KEFM), The European Union (EU) and the Children’s Investment FundFoundation (CIFF).

The main objective of the ‘Circular Waste Solutions’ project is to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from waste by creating awareness about source segregation of waste and ensuring resource recovery from waste through decentralized processing of waste in the city.

The project is themed on providing support for implementing Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 objectives. The project also aims to build capacities of officials and sanitation staff, and set up or augment the existing processing infrastructure for wet and dry waste. The project will help in substantial reduction of CO2 emissions in the waste sector over five years in the five lighthouse cities of India including Bengaluru. After the success of the first event on July 3, they have so far organised three Cheela Melas and also plan to organise one on the July 26 at KR Market and on July 31 at the Madiwala Market.