MIWF

Resolve Trash2Cash is an urban climate initiative of SAFE for resolving the municipal solid waste of the city to an alternative livelihood for city's rag-pickers and unemployed poor women. The project has evolved as women led micro enterprise; those are trained to recycle waste paper, plastics and wet wastes from the city dustbins to make micro-utility household products.

"Team up to Clean up", campaign at residential level was undertaken by young women team of resolvet2c basically to create awareness on segregation of waste at source among 4700 hosueholds in Saltlake city of Kolkata. Heavily mixed waste cannot be recycled and is hazardous to human health; and everyday waste workers are susceptible to injuries and other health problems. This program is undertaken by SAFE in collaboration with Bidhanagar Municipal Corporation, BMC involving 150 more waste scavenging women, who are ready to take up recycling as art. Match International Women Fund, MIWF have been the collaborative partner since last year for this ground level initiative, which now have begin to receive support from the local municipal authorities. Till, last year the Rt2c team had to carry out the mainstreaming process by straying around the fringes outside landfill, which posed difficulty in reaching out to the larger section of this waste workers community.

The program aims to mainstream thousands of poor women scavenging waste everyday as victims of circumstances, as our aim is to create women entrepreneurs not better waste scavengers.

Dumping of unsegregated and unfiltered waste into the landfills is creating a clear and obvious threat to human health as well as a threat to our environment from the hazardous contaminated air emissions emitted from the landfill bio-degradation. There are over ten toxic gases released from landfills, of the most serious of which is methane. Methane gas is naturally produced during the process of decay of organic matter. As methane gas is formed, it builds up pressure and then begins to move through the soil. In a recent study of 288 landfills, off-site migration of gases, including methane, has been detected at 83% of these landfill sites. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

It has also been shown that people living close to landfills suffer from lung and heart diseases from the toxic gases that are released from the landfill degradation.