Restore the ‘singaara’ to Chennai

Started by Siddharth Hande, Rohit Koliyot and Sonaal Bangera, this one-year-old organisation’s aim is to help the city stay clean. “Our city has a beautiful ecosystem, but we’re damaging it beyond imagination. We started studying the landscape using geological mapping, which Siddharth is an expert in. We found that tonnes of waste are being dumped into the landfills around Chennai, and wanted to prevent this,” says Farhaad Khazvini, the foundation’s community manager.

They operate in three steps — “We research how the city’s garbage is being generated and where it’s dumped, then we advocate people how to segregate their waste into recyclable material, organic waste and rejects (non-recyclable material). Finally, we create a brand of upcycled products using the recyclable materials collected,” he says.

Since a city clean-up is the need of the hour, they encourage each individual to do their bit. “The reality is that recyclable materials have been mixed with sewage water and flood waste. Only solid waste management companies and the corporation can solve this issue completely and avoid epidemics. However, we’ve been getting a positive response over the last week for our city clean-ups. Volunteers are turning up in huge numbers to help out — each individual should implement waste segregation and proper disposal to ensure another ‘flood’ of garbage doesn’t occur. It’s time for a change in mindsets,”

concludes Farhaad.