Two Mumbai women are on a mission to clean up and manage waste in 10 villages in Raigad district. Jerry Pinto, poet, writer and translator | One of the biggest environmental banes of today’s time is waste, especially plastic waste. Two women have taken it upon themselves to show that it is entirely possible to clean up the trash and manage it efficiently.
Project Aamhi's work has generated employment in 10 villages. Photo: Project Aamhi | Project Aamhi, an NGO, started as a pilot project in 2020 with the aim to find solutions to manage waste in rural Raigad. It was officially registered in 2023.
“Due to a rise in tourism in Raigad district and with better connectivity, a lot of tourists visit these destinations now, but leave behind a trail of trash,” says Hansu Pardiwala, who co-founded the organisation with Rosalind Pereira, Kiran Patel and Rita Raje. This, along with the lack of waste management by the locals, made them realise that the issue at hand needs to be dealt with quickly. The NGO collects around 700 kgs of discarded textiles.
Photo: Project Aamhi | “There is a huge gap in the enforcement of waste-related rules. There are rules made by governing bodies, but nobody is enforcing them,” says Pardiwala. Plastic waste is the biggest environmental bane in today's time.
Photo: Project Aamhi | “In rural India, there’s a very different kind of waste management problem compared to urban areas. In cities, there's somebody that comes in to pick up the waste, whi.