This Company Shows How Organized Waste Management is Need of the Hour The ORS app will help you clear your junk and in return pay you for it

A Bengaluru-based company is offering to clear your scrap and even pay you for it with just a click. What we famously refer to as raddiwalas (scrap dealers) will now be at your doorstep to clear your junk and you won't even have to haggle.

Green start-up Recover Habitat whose ORS (Old Raddi Sold) app has been operating for almost a year now was founded by Hemant Zade, Suresh Dass and Mangesh Chincholkar. Customers can book the app for scrap to be cleared from their doorstep.

How it Works

Moving beyond traditional scraps like newspapers and carton, ORS has set standard rates to collect every form of scrap, from metal scraps like cans, utensils, iron rods to e-waste like electrical wires, non-operative mobiles, and laptops, to all those unused cables lying around.

Users can customize their needs, based on their requirements like individuals, societies, and even commercial spaces.

The company says its business model is that of an aggregator and not restricted to B2C operations but also B2B operations. The collected scrap and waste material gets segregated and sold to different industrial dealers, who are in need of them for recycling. The company then charges a commission, on the basis of each transaction made, from these dealers. As of now, the operations are restricted to Bangalore only, but the company is working on scaling it to other parts of the country.

While there are other similar ventures like Junkkart and kabadiwala.com, ORS says its aim is to think long-term and not restrict itself to just scrap dealing.

Having the advantage of being based in Bengaluru, which has been chosen in the second lot of Smart Cities, the company wants to steer waste management's unorganized sector into becoming organized, that too in an environmentally friendly manner.

Challenges

However, foraying into an unorganized sector like this, which has been ignored for years, is not an easy task. "Awareness is the biggest challenge when dealing with waste management in this country, " said Zade, who feels people in India want a solution for waste management but are not ready to put efforts or money into the sector.

"Currently only 68% of the garbage generated in the country is collected, of which only 28% is treated by the municipal authorities. Poor segregation of waste collection and treatment of waste leads to dumped garbage on streets. Awareness and an organized platform like ours will not only enable to tackle waste management but also help recycle tons of dry garbage that is considered waste by most households," said Chincholkar.

The Way Ahead

With the focus shifting to technology to manage more and more sectors of our civic life, ORS also wants to incorporate the same into its future operations. The firm is currently working with its tech partners on an IoT device dubbed as iBin, which will be an intelligent, waste monitoring and recycling system, delivering data over the cloud to help partners know what the status of waste is.

Additionally, the company, which only deals with dry waste as of now, is in talks with BBMP to provide solutions for wet waste management.