World Environment Day: A Rising Wave Against Ocean Waste

When Divya Hegde founded Baeru (meaning “roots” in Kannada), she set out to root sustainability and waste recovery in everyday life, starting with the coastal communities of Udupi, Karnataka, where she noticed a growing disconnect as the city raced towards development goals.

“There’s this mad ambition to become a metro city,” she said. “They want to be like Bombay or Bangalore, with glass buildings and consumption-driven lifestyles. That’s how modernisation has been defined and marketed to them.” The result has been a community reeling from a severe lack of a reliable waste management system.

Baeru began by addressing the problem at its roots, with door-to-door waste collection done in collaboration with the local government body. The waste collectors employed were largely women from marginalised communities with limited employment options.

During waste collection, Baeru firmly ensures households follow a guiding principle: no mixed waste will be accepted by the collectors. “If someone refuses to segregate, our waste collectors have full authority to leave the garbage behind,” said Hegde. “We’ve found that when you don’t interfere at the micro level, the women feel empowered to make decisions — and households quickly fall in line.”

Baeru reports having diverted 35,000 metric tons from the land and sea.

Reaching communities through youth

Baeru’s household waste management model aims at behavioural change, starting with students. “We began with schools and colleges,” said Hegde. “Because we believe youngsters influence everything at home — from what appliances families buy to how they manage waste.”

Baeru worked with educational institutions to make it mandatory for parents to attend workshops alongside their children. These sessions focused on plastic segregation and its direct impact on public health, particularly that of children. “Parents may argue with a social worker, but they won’t argue in front of their children,” Hegde added. “That’s where change begins.”

Recognising the limited impacts of pamphlets and lectures, Baeru turned to Yakshagana, a traditional Karnataka art form, to communicate complex issues around plastic waste and public health. They created a character called Plastic Asura — a demon made of plastic — who battles with humans on stage. Performed by local artists, these plays resonate with audiences emotionally and culturally.

Managing marine waste

With support from the Karnataka government, Baeru’s waste management model operates both on land and at sea. They partner with fishing communities, who routinely encounter ocean waste. “Fishermen often find ghost nets, plastic bottles, and even sanitary waste in the ocean,” said Hegde. “Since there’s no processing or sorting solutions on land, they were just throwing it back.”

Baeru incentivised them to return the plastic to shore, where it is cleaned and sorted to be shipped to recycling units. Fishermen are supplied with collection bags, and compensated for their efforts in bringing back the plastic waste. Once ashore, the waste is washed, dried, and sorted: recyclables go to registered facilities, while non-recyclables are sent to cement factories for co-processing.

“Sanitary pads and diapers are our biggest nightmare,” said Hegde, pointing to cultural taboos that hinder open conversations. “They’re non-recyclable, and extremely costly to dispose of properly.” Sending sanitary waste to bio-incinerators can cost ₹40 to ₹70 per kg. With the scale of use in Tier 2 and 3 cities, collection becomes financially unsustainable. While menstrual cups are a sustainable solution, adoption is slow due to cultural stigma. At scale, these products remain largely non-recyclable, making sustainable disposal even more difficult.

Additionally, microplastics currently pose a growing, insurmountable challenge, whose impacts are yet to be understood. Hegde shares that about 15-30% of marine plastic debris breaks down into microplastics within a year in tropical coastal waters, triggered by UV radiation, heat, wave action, and microbial degradation. She adds that anywhere between 712 to 2,080 tonnes/year of micro plastics are potentially generated from macro-plastic degradation. This invisible crisis threatens marine life and human health — yet remains largely unquantified and unregulated.

“Near-shore microplastic concentrations are likely above 1,000-2,000 particles/m³ in high-risk zones such as Malpe, Udyavara, Sasihithlu, Gokarna, and Karwar, particularly during the monsoon season and in the post-fishing period when gear disposal is high,” added Hegde.

Leveraging technology

What began as a simple dashboard has grown into a localised, low-tech mobile app that empowers women collectors to track, report, and trace waste journeys in real time.

“When women collect waste, they enter details like quantity and quality into the app,” said Hegde. This tracking system doesn’t just improve transparency — it helps women identify where there is a leak and encourages collective accountability between the various groups — those who collect, sort and move the waste. As per the data provided by Baeru, roughly 25-30 tonnes/day of mismanaged plastic leaks into the sea across Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, and Uttara Kannada. A tracking system enables accountability, explains Hegde.

In addition, Baeru is deploying image recognition cameras to track plastic types and manufacturing brands during segregation to inform Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). EPR is a policy aimed at holding corporations accountable for the plastic waste they generate. However, according to Hegde, EPR compliance in India has a long way to go as the tracking and quantifying of waste remains a challenge.

The way forward

As recycling facilities are situated in other regions across the country, their next goal involves enabling the waste collectors to set up recycling units themselves. Aside from ensuring stable income for the collectors, this endeavour would also reduce the carbon footprint of the waste. “Monthly income is just one step. True empowerment means enabling ambition,” says Hegde. “Why should the lion’s share of profit go elsewhere when these women are doing all the heavy lifting?”

With over 1,000 livelihoods created, Baeru demonstrates how environmental challenges can be steadily addressed through active community participation.

(Published under Creative Commons from Mongabay India. Read the original article here)