From a volunteer group of four working moms to a social enterprise, RUR Greenlife PVT. Ltd has come a long way. Pooja Patel speaks to Monish Narke, Founder & CEO to know more
Densely populated Mumbai has been sitting on bad waste management. The lack of civic will has resulted in the recent Deonar fire. With no system in place to sort out waste and send it out for recycling, citizens have a long way to go. While the majority of us whinge and throw up our hands at this situation, there are few out there who have already embarked on the path to clean up the mess as much as they can.
Four working mothers, Monisha Narke, Sejal Kshirsagar, Malvika Gadiyar and Smita Shirodkar, started off as a volunteer group to tackle recycling at household levels. Under the banner of RUR — (Are you Reducing, Reusing and Recycling); these women started reaching out to people and generating awareness. Narke elaborates, “We did this for quite some time but soon realised these people whom we were educating, weren’t putting things into practise. That’s when we mapped out our plans as to how we can make some difference and went on to register it as a social enterprise -RUR Greenlife PVT. Ltd.”
Their first initiative involved collaborating with 22 stores of Sahakari Bhandar across the city where they started a programme under which RUR would incentivise use of cloth bags against the plastic ones. This initiative was a huge success and turned out to be their first tangible result-oriented initiative. Since then, RUR has been able to help people reduce carbon footprints by various initiatives and programmes and the one that has been well received by all, is their attempt to recycle tetra pack cartons.
For five plus years, RUR has tied up with 37 retail outlets across the city where people can drop their used tetra pack cartons. This has been a major success as so far, they have recycled 13 lakh tetras and in 2013, it even got them recognition by the Limca Book of Records in ‘Development in Recycling’. Narke elucidates, “After all these learning years we are now offering awareness, implementation of the recycling system; send waste for recycling and we also bring back the recycled product back to the market (products range from pen stands, tables, chairs, garden benches and much more).” These recyclable tetra packs are sent to a sorting point in Chembur and is recycled at a plant in Palghar.
The real task that RUR team understands is that the kids need to be involved in the activities as they are the ones who’ll be taking it forward. This is the reason they have been conducting various workshops, awareness drives, treasure hunts, field visits etc. with the kids .One of their programme encourages kids to share ideas on carbon-reducing habits A child was so enthralled by RUR’s tetra pack recycling programme, that he single-handedly managed to collect 10,000 recyclable tetra packs.
Narke hopes that eco-friendly lifestyle is adopted by all and that there can be a better future for the children. She concludes, “All this I am doing is to give a better future for my kids and the children everywhere, as they deserve a better planet.”
RUR's numbers:
- 13 lakh tetra pack cartons have been recycled
- 200 trees saved
- 100 tons of biodegradable waste composted
- 150 tons of reduction in CO2 emission
- 125 tons of waste saved from landfills
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 "RUR Greenlife PVT. Ltd has been conducting various initiatives across the city")
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