Stinking garbage. Decorative pots. Do you fathom a link between the two? Poonam Bir Kasturi has. A National Institute of Design alumnus based in Bangalore, Kasturi has come out with a simple solution for reducing landfill waste ? a problem that plagues all our cities. ?Just changing your dustbin to a earthen pot can turn you into a environmentally responsible citizen. At Daily Dump, we offer an array of decorative composting containers that can be used in the home to manage organic household waste and convert it to useful high-quality compost,? says Kasturi of the start-up. So now, your daily trash can silently turn into compost in terracota pots lined up at the entrance of your home.
With the help of some like-minded friends and her students at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Kasturi started the brick and mortar story, or rather the clay and pot story, utilising her product designing skills. Along with it, started the website dailydump.org, where customers could purchase composting terracota vessels (prices ranging from Rs 50 to Rs 500) of different sizes and shapes. Rakes, spoons, spatulas and other supplies can also be bought off the website, which also offers information on composting, what kind of trash is biodegradable and how to turn the pile of trash. For consumers hard-pressed for time, there are the weekly, fortnightly or monthly service plans, with a Daily Dump ?servicewalla? dropping by to take care of maintenance. A weekly service plan for six-months costs Rs 2,000, a monthly service plan would require a payment of Rs 1,000. The prices might be somewhat steep, but so what, it?s all for a good cause.
?I was really so impressed with the daily dump concept and production. The miniature set for kids can get them interested in caring for the environment in a novel way,? says Nazu Tonse, one of the first customers at Daily Dump.
For VM Rao, the benefits have gone beyond the obvious. ?We are now the proud owners of high-quality compost. This has even heightened my husband?s interest in gardening,? she says.
While Daily Dump offers its services only in Bangalore city, it has no problems in copycat companies coming up across the country. It is based on an open-source idea ? the clone does not pay any fees for access to knowledge or drawings. ?We want to modify the behaviour of home waste disposal and active citizen participation. We have got a clone out of Chennai and have requests from 10 other locations in India. In Bangalore itself, we have tie-ups with four other outlets. These will be fully functional by the end of August,? Kasturi says.
As of now, Daily Dump claims to have 30 customers who are covered in the service plan out of a total of 700. The start-up expects to break-even in another year. Venture capitalists have expressed interest in the business model, although the project so far has been completely funded by Kasturi. ?We enable micro-enterprises to sprout all over the country and supporting these as well as encouraging new knowledge to be built around the issues of urban waste,? she says. Well, that?s a business model which combines environmental engineering, livelihood to traditional potters and promotion of social entrepreneurship.