The gathering of hundreds of bright and social-media savvy students from Christ University last Friday on the 11th of August, marked the conclusion of the ‘Coffee with Recyclers’ activation, an initiative by BBC Media Action running in the city as part of the #Invaluables campaign. The activation events featured conversations with the informal waste pickers of Bengaluru about their lives, families, hobbies, education, children, and their aspirations – aspects of waste pickers’ lives that go unnoticed by the public. These conversations were hosted by popular Kannada actor and influencer, Bhoomi Shetty.
The #Invaluables is a campaign designed by BBC Media Action as part of Saamuhika Shakti, a first-of-its-kind collaborative in India, where eight implementing organisations have joined forces to enable informal waste pickers to have greater agency to lead secure and dignified lives. Recognition and respect for waste pickers and the value of waste picking were identified as one of the key objectives of Saamuhika Shakti for waste pickers to experience greater social acceptance. Through the ‘Coffee with Recyclers’ activations, the #Invaluables initiative aims to shift perceptions about waste picking and informal waste pickers in the city of Bengaluru by bringing their crucial contributions to the forefront.
The Coffee with Recyclers event featured an art installation replicating a landfill. Created by five informal waste pickers over a period of six days, this artwork used more than 30 kilograms of recyclable waste. It highlighted the amount of waste kept away from landfills by the city’s informal waste pickers through their picking, sorting and recycling – a service provided by city’s #InvaluableRecyclers.
An augmented reality (AR) filter created by BBC Media Action, let students teleport the landfill art installation onto their phones and they get to know that informal waste pickers contribute to the city and its environment by saving 383,250 tonnes of waste from going into landfills every year.
In collaboration with Christ University’s Ecolectic Club, the conclusion of ‘Coffee with Recyclers’ at the campus was an attempt to spark conversations in Bengaluru about the informal waste pickers, their contributions to society and the challenge they face due to social stigma and lack of access to equitable opportunities. The initiative saw participation by more than 900 students across Christ University and other colleges.
Recently, as part of the #Invaluables initiative, BBC Media Action also collaborated with Shraddha Jain, AKA Aiyyo Shraddha (Instagram handle – @aiyyoshraddha) to create a video to educates people about proper waste disposal, that could make picking and recycling waste a lot simpler and safer for informal waste pickers. Titled “Eh Whattya!” the viral video, set a benchmark in creating content with social purpose, with a whopping 9.3 million views, making it one of Shraddha’s most viewed videos of all time.
Speaking on the culmination of the ‘Coffee with Recyclers’ campus activity, Soma Katiyar, Executive Director, BBC Action Media, said, “Bengaluru generates more than 5,757 metric tonnes of waste every day. The role of our #InvaluableRecyclers in helping recycle and reduce the amount of waste in the city cannot be understated. We wanted to highlight their contributions in an appealing and interesting way, to get as many people talking about it as possible. Activities like Coffee with Recyclers and the art installation at college campuses will help spark conversations and a better appreciation for the work done by waste pickers, which otherwise go unnoticed. The #Invaluables initiative aims to establish the interconnectedness between the lives of city dwellers and informal waste pickers while highlighting the indispensable role that informal waste pickers play in keeping the city clean, the environment sustainable and by recycling, help prevent tonnes of serviceable waste from going to the landfills.”
Bhoomi Shetty who hosted the ‘Coffee with Recycler’ sessions, said, “I consider myself privileged to be part of the #Invaluables initiative. It gave me an opportunity to not only interact with #InvaluableRecyclers and understand more about their lives, but also learn what we as citizens can do to help them recycle more while also ensuring that they stay safe while handling waste. I would like to appeal to everyone in the city to treat our #InvaluableRecyclers with the respect they deserve for safeguarding us and our environment from waste.”
Mansoor Gous, who operates a Dry Waste Collection Centre in J P Nagar and participated in Coffee with Recycler at Christ University, said, “I really do like interacting with youth. And Coffee with Recycler has provided me that opportunity. Youth are the agents of change because they have the potential to keep the conversation going about unseen aspects of waste pickers’ lives. There is a lot that Bengaluru can do to help #InvaluableRecyclers. Segregation of waste is one such thing. But it is also important to be mindful how we are disposing waste because that has potential to harm people who are protecting you and the city.”
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