An army to keep beautiful Himalayas clean Pahadi Robinhood, a backpackers' hostel cum business incubator has taken up an initiative of waste segregation in the mountains seriously Ruehie Karri
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hen we think of Kullu and Manali, the first thing that strikes us is a good snowy vacation. Instead, what is making headlines these days is the alarming rise of waste accumulation in these districts. According to recent reports by the Manali municipal council, Manali generates around 30 to 40 tonnes of waste every day and nearly 2000 tonnes during the peak tourist months of May and June. Kullu MC is struggling to dispose of and recycle its garbage as they don't have the necessary space for landfills. The panchayats arrived at a solution to transport the waste and let it be treated in the new garbage power plant in Manali. This is where Pahadi Robinhood comes in, which was co-founded by Mihil Bhansali, Joshua Willig and Sant Kumar Sharma. It is a backpackers' hostel, also doubling as a business incubator located in the town of Naggar in Kullu district. To kickstart the incubator, they themselves
Environment & people
14
March 2020
started the business of waste collection, having observed the non eco-friendly ways being used to dispose of the non-biodegradable trash. Talking to environment & people, Mihil Bhansali spoke about how everything came into being. Read on to the conversation to understand how. How did you embark on the journey of Pahadi Robinhood? The main aim behind starting this company was to empower the rural communities of developing markets, thereby encouraging upcoming entrepreneurs to incubate their ideas with our company. Us being experienced marketing consultants can work out the nitty-gritty of the fledgling business and help it grow in a major way. I met Joshua in Vietnam during a vacation and got talking. We realised that we share a lot of the same values and had a strong urge to help increase the markets of rural communities be it anywhere in Vietnam, Cambodia or India. We decided upon India as I speak the local language and India has a huge per cen-
tage of budding entrepreneurs with one-ofa-kind ideas. Our search for a place led to meeting our third partner, Sant Kumar Sharma, in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh. Why did you decide to take up waste collection as your first venture? During the construction of our hostel, we noticed that hotels and other hospitality chains disposed of their garbage by simply burning it in the streets. Even tourists followed this unhealthy practice or simply dumped waste in the river. This was a revelation to us. We wanted to find a feasible solution for disposal/recycling of waste with lesser to zero side effects. After conducting some research, we came to know that the construction of a new garbage power plant was underway near the town of Manali, in Rangri district. It was going to become operational very soon and that got us thinking. This waste-to-energy plant works with segregated waste, as much as 100 tonnes every day to generate 1.5MW of electricity. We approached the panchayat of
