Smart tech for waste management at IIT-I
A start-up incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Indore and led by the institute’s alumni has created a mobile van for smart waste management. The start-up, Swaaha, is the first officially registered start-up of IIT Indore under the Startup India scheme. The founders , Gaurav Gupta, Jwalant Shah and Rohit Agrawal who are mechanical engineering graduates, have developed a mobile composting unit to promote decentralised waste management for organic waste.
“As students, we saw that the nearest dumping ground for IIT was 40 kilometres away and research has shown that logistics and transport are the major obstacles for efficient waste management,” said Gupta. “This made us realise that in-situ waste management is essential as once the waste is mixed, segregation is very difficult.” At the first step, they decided to provide waste management for the institute by focusing on the organic waste for almost a year. “Since this is a capital intensive project, we decided to locate our apparatus in a mobile van that can travel to other parts of the city,” explained Gupta.
The machine is equipped to process 250kg of liquid waste in a hour.
After the pilot run at the campus, the founders have reached out to Simrol village to share the technology to create compost from organic waste which can be used by farmers for organic farming.” Simrol has been chosen as IIT Indore has adopted it under the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan campaign of the central government.