The Better India · 127 days ago

Azim Premji University Helps Karnataka Village Achiever 90% Waste Segregation Through Local Action

When students from Azim Premji University realized they were teaching sustainability while ignoring the waste crisis just beyond their gates, they chose to step into it. Working alongside Bilapura Panchayat and waste management experts, they built something deceptively simple: a Zero Waste Centre where villagers could see food scraps become compost, plastic roofing sheets made from recycled waste, and a food forest rising from soil once buried under garbage. "We cannot keep preaching sustainability without practising it," says Professor Anjor Bhaskar, and that clarity shaped everything -- from employing local women as waste workers to students building tracking apps to residents in 220 households switching to reusable menstrual products. What began as one overwhelmed village now includes eight neighboring panchayats, proving that transformation happens not through grand gestures but through the patient work of making care routine.