Managing sanitary waste in ITIs, offices: Pune-based startup to sets up system

Sustainable and hygienic lifestyle is the need of the hour and small enterprises who are gearing up to make big can no longer afford to be innovative at the cost of the environment. As sanitary waste disposal is becoming a huge problem in India, that needs to be tackled on an urgent basis, a Pune-based startup has set up a mechanism through which they will mind the unscientific disposal of monthly 4800 sanitary pads that end up as landfill.

The company has entered into an agreement with the Maharashtra State Innovation Council for a year to work towards improving the management of sanitary waste at offices, and government-run Industrial Training Institutes.

The two-year-old venture has built by a system that will process sanitary waste in a smokeless and odourless system. Starting with the collection of the waste at the source point to set up a chain of processes that ensures its safe disposal, the firm has everything in place.

The growing awareness about menstrual hygiene and the availability of affordable sanitary pads has increased the use of the product. It is estimated 1000 women dispose off at least 8000 used sanitary pads and 1 million used pads are generated in a month in India leading to a huge challenge in waste management. Since these pads are most non-biodegradable or take decades to completely decomposed, they are burned in an unscientific manner or end up as landfill.

Ajinkya Dhariya, founder and CEO of PadCare Labs said that the firm will install 40 collection facility at ITI, Aundh. The enterprise has already demonstrated the working of their systems at various institutes like the National Chemical Laboratory, Indian Institute of Science and Cummins College in last one year. PadCare labs are readying for the installation of their system but they have already started demonstrating the procedure of collection and processing, before their commercial launch.

Detailing about how the entire collection and waste management will function he said that a collector called ‘Sanibin’ will be installed at bathrooms that will store up to 50 pads a month without creating any bacterial reaction or emitting a bad odour. The collected waste will be then sent to a processor, ‘Saneco’ that will manage 1500 disposed off pads and convert them to recyclable quality material.

PadCare is in talks with the authorities of other metros like Chennai, other corporation, residential societies to install their safe waste processing