Omega Healthcare, BBMP and Saahas successfully complete one year of keeping NAL Wind Tunnel Road clean

by Suman Gupta

• 17,985 people have handed over their waste to Kasa Kiosk- ‘Bengaluru’s first manned garbage kiosk’ resulting in  61.5 tonnes  of waste being diverted from landfill

• Kasa kiosk has been recognised as a winner in Environment and Sustainability category by the eNGO Awards

Bengaluru,February 2020: ‘Kasa Kiosk’, Bengaluru’s first manned kiosk for segregated waste-collection, set up by Omega Healthcare Management Services Pvt. Ltd., in association with the Bruhat Bengaluru MahanagaraPalike (BBMP) and Saahas — a non-profit organization working in the field of waste management, has successfully completed one year, collecting 55,776 kg of segregated waste and has also won the eNGO Challenge Awards.

From 200 people handing over their waste in the first month, to 1,500 people in the sixth month, there has been an exponential growth in the number of people using the kiosk to hand over segregated waste.

The kiosk, set up near the Air Force Campus on NAL Wind Tunnel Road, Murugeshpalya, has been operational daily in two shifts – 7 am to 11 am and 7 pm to 11.30 pm, and is manned by two people. Especially beneficial to the households and small commercial establishments that miss the BBMP collection vehicles, the kiosk hands over collected dry waste to the Dry Waste Collection Centre while Wet and Domestic Hazardous waste is taken by BBMP.

Mr SV Krishnan, COO, Omega Healthcare, said, “At Omega our firm belief is that, as an integral part of the community, we contribute to it both at the corporate and individual levels. Saahas has been a great partner in transforming this belief into action. It is rewarding to see a conspicuous change in the environment as well as in people’s mindset towards following waste segregation. CSR activities such as these give us an opportunity to work closely with the community and we are glad that it has also gained recognition in the 6th eNGO Challenge Awards.  We hope that this will inspire many more NGO-Corporate partnerships to take our communities forward.”

MsDivya Tiwari, CEO of Saahas, said, “The key objective was to see how people respond to another way of waste collection. Instead of door to door collection at a fixed time, we provided flexible time but the person had to walk to the kiosk with segregated waste. For the past one year, we have noticed the transformation and have also seen a rise in the number of people opting to leverage the kiosk. Clearly, awareness has increased as has the visibility of the Kasa Kiosk. The project being judged a winner in the environment and sustainability category at the 6^theNGO Challenge Awards is motivation for us to do more for our communities.”

The main reason for setting up the Kasa Kiosk was to improve the condition of Wind Tunnel Road and increase awareness about segregation. It has been a successful year in manifesting this goal, considering approximately 17,985 people have participated in this initiative, showing their belongingness to the community and aspiration for a better environment.

About Omega Healthcare: Omega Healthcare Management Services, a front-runner in the healthcare service space in India was

founded in 2004. Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, it has offices in Bengaluru, Chennai, Trichy,

Bhimavaram and Hyderabad in India, and Manila & Cebu in the Philippines. Omega handles value-driven work pertaining to Provider & Healthcare Solutions, Payer Solutions, Pharma Solutions, Analytic Solutions and related Technology solutions for large US-based companies. The company currently has more than 15,000 employees.­­ http://www.omegahms.com

About Saahas:Saahas is a non-profit organization working in the field of waste management with a core belief that when waste is managed at source, it becomes a resource. Headquartered in Bengaluru, the organization has been in existence since 2001. They help build zero-waste communities across rural and urban India to manage their waste at source by reducing, reusing and recycling their waste and achieving 90% resource recovery.  https://saahas.org/