Tech: Waste Carts

A critical challenge facing many waste picker groups we have worked with is a lack of handcart underneath 10,000 Indian rupees or approximately $200. The handcart is an essential tool used by waste pickers to collect and source separate waste. It is arguably the most important tool a waste picker can use. However, $200 poses a large capital cost for a group of waste pickers or even a nonprofit working with waste pickers.

To that effect, Waste Ventures is developing a new hand cart under 7,000 Indian Rupees or $140 for broad dissemination to all waste picker groups so they may adopt the design and locally create it for decreased costs. Waste Ventures has had the opportunity to work with Adam Talsma, an MIT graduate who is currently testing and documenting protypes with Innovation Center for Poverty and curious engineer who excels at assembling steel bridges and re-designing cycle-rickshaws , among other things. After a few weeks of documenting handcart challenges and waste picker suggestions for improvements in Pune and at our project site in Osmanabad, Adam has been building and testing prototypes in collaboration with Innovation Center for Poor (ICP) in Ahmedabad, India.

We aim to have a design completed by the end of January for application in our next project. You can follow project progress at http://wastecart.posterous.com/.