Brief: About the Project 

Skill Development Courses and Workshops - Garbage to Garden

IIP Foundation, under its project Garbage to Garden provides a Mb>dynamic platform to enable members of society to lead, innovate, and serve the society and protect its environment. This bottom-up interdisciplinary approach creates state-of-the-art research, education, and service projects that aim to help people become guardians and beneficiaries of nature.

The Foundation’s novel approach to public participation addresses public concerns and provides solutions that adapt to the shifting socio-political and natural environments of our times. A citizen centric framework that defines the Foundation-community collaboration process has been developed. The model developed is one of leadership generation encouraging environmental sustainability by enabling people from all age groups and walks of life, to partake on a journey of learning the most viable and eco-friendly practices and to transform them into feasible business opportunities. In brief, the Foundation leads in a public participatory approach that confronts local challenges and addresses them with research and evidence-based sustainable environmental solutions.

A multidisciplinary course has been devised keeping in mind the multiple challenges faced by our society, environment and habitat today and deriving suitable solutions and innovative practices to combat the same in a viable manner. We also focused on building strong relations and networks with other institutions that are engaged in eco-friendly endeavors for beneficial and lucrative collaborative projects.

Through our skill development courses and workshops we provide an
unconventional teaching approach developed and implemented to think outside of the box and take on real-world problems in harmony with nature. Anchored in experiential learning, we invite guest lecturers who are recognized individuals known and committed to the environmental sustainability, they raise awareness of ecological issues by proposing innovative and sustainable solutions and helping students come up with the same.

Our education projects are not restricted to the Foundation premises. We also conduct workshops in other schools, colleges, universities and offices. Being open to collaboration and dissemination of knowledge is our core practice and we strive to educate as many students as we can. Only by the spread of knowledge can we hope to encourage the practice of sustainability and change society for its betterment.

As we look into the future, IIP Foundation is keen to continue promoting its innovative research, education and service programs and will remain the reference Center from which local citizens can seek knowledge and sound environmental solutions.

Project location

Noida, National Capital Region.

Target beneficiaries

Direct beneficiaries: Responsible Citizens of all age groups, focused on an eco-friendly way of life Indirect beneficiaries: Schools, Offices, Colleges, Universities, Society at large and environment as a whole.

Goal

Skilling the students by providing them necessary knowledge and tools to learn eco-friendly business opportunities, awareness programme management, innovative business ideas related to the 3 Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), by generating leadership and entrepreneurial mindset, focusing on sustainable and green practices.

Objective

• Knowledge & Research: To enhance awareness of students regarding the opportunities present in waste management and provide necessary knowledge and information regarding the same.
• Innovation & Development: To build capacity of the students to innovate and think out of the box solutions to environmental challenges and develop them as successful business ideas and opportunities.
• Marketing: To instill in them a marketing mindset that will enable them to promote their ideas and products, and further spread the eco-consciousness among fellow citizens.
• Networking and Collaboration: Equip students with the right know how to build on relationships and bonds that will strengthen the fabric of society through ecologically sound practices and projects.

Project Summary

Urban India is growing in repute as the world’s third largest garbage generator, at the amount estimated by Central Pollution Control Board to be 52 million tonnes per year or 0.144 million tonnes per day in 2016. The top three states producing the highest amount of garbage are Uttar Pradesh (19180 TPD), Maharashtra (17000 TPD) and Tamil Nadu (14532 TPD). Noida, the proposed target location in Uttar Pradesh, alone produces 660 metric tonnes every day. Given such state of affairs, India needs to set aside at least 66 hectares of land for landfill to accommodate 165 metric tonne of garbage that would be generated per year by 2030.

The proposed project is an intervention to reduce the garbage generated by households through creating awareness and building capacities of residents of Noida in efficient waste management at source and thus make Noida a city free of landfills by the year 2020. The efforts of the government to keep the country clean through its Swachh Bharat Mission shall be strengthened through the intervention and the innovative ideas and solutions that will be brought about when creative minds are guided with the expertise of the faculty at IIP Foundation. The importance of waste management and the variety of business opportunities and benefits that can be derived from it are immense. The courses and workshops have been designed to not only to educate and disseminate information to our students but shall also enhance their income earning capacities and opportunities for business exploration.

Understanding the nuance of every aspect of waste and methods to turn it into a resource will be the core focus. IIP Foundation with its vast expertise and experience in the field of waste management aims to encourage sustainable solutions and to tap into the ideas generated by the students during the course. IIP Foundation has worked closely with renowned individuals in the field of waste management, who will be of guidance to the students and prove to be fantastic mentors. Providing support and guidance to the students in every step of the way to make most of the course and achieve sustainable and economically viable opportunities shall be the main goal. With a firm belief in its mission to bring back traditional knowledge and practices that keep in mind the environment and productive self reliance is the mission of IIP Foundation.

Rationale

The end stage of a product is waste or garbage. As long as there is consumption, there will always be waste generation. In 2016 urban India produced 52 million tonnes per year or 0.144 million tonnes per day of garbage. The figures are expected to double in the years to come considering that India is undergoing rapid urbanization with increasing consumption pattern. Setting aside the problems and issues that plague society, IIP Foundation wishes to focus on the solutions and opportunities that can be created with the help of information and skill.

There arises a need to make each citizen aware about waste and responsible waste management as their collective effort will help in reducing the amount of garbage reaching the landfills. Going a step ahead, IIP Foundation through the Skill Development Courses and Workshops shall bring to the fore innovative solutions to complex problems, with creativity and renewed perception to old problems. It is time to turn problems into solutions and to fuse together economically profitable ventures with core values of ecologically sound practices.

Description of Activities

• Regular Classes: The classes shall be a platform for dissemination of traditional knowledge and information as well as a place for lively discussion and debate. It will lay the foundation of all that is related to waste management.
• Presentations: The students shall give presentations on topics assigned to them; this will enable them to gain confidence in terms of public speaking and will also further foster their mastery over the subject.
• Field Work: Students will go to the grass root to develop their ideas, engage with locals and come up with innovative solutions to problems. This will also enable them to see from up close the problems that are otherwise just seen on paper.
• Workshops: Workshops will be conducted by students to gain experience on the various aspects involved, right from venue selection, to speaker-audience engagement, proposals and invitations that are to be sent and so on. It will give the students hands on experience on dealing with audience members in mass awareness programmes.
• Guest Lecturers: The Foundation with its linkages shall invite from time to time special guest lecturers who are renowned in the field of wastemanagement, their vast knowledge and expertise will be used to guide the students, giving them a wholesome enriching experience.
• Case Studies: Success stories and detailed studies of those successful and thriving in the field to enable students to understand what works and how it works.

Faculty

The proposed courses and workshops shall be implemented by a faculty comprising eminent individuals in the field of waste management, with a vast knowledge and expertise in the domain. With years of experience by their side and a strong network in place, they can guide the students and mentor them to bring out the creative genius in every student.