Greengine Environmental Solutions, a firm with a patented incentive-based waste management system to promote segregation, was founded by Nitin Srivastava, who left his job.
Nitin Srivastava was engaged in waste water management in a company in 2015. He was interested in providing technological answers to urgent problems after completing a Master’s degree in environmental engineering. He also wanted to go off on his own, so he began preliminary investigation.
He visited villages surrounding his birthplace of Kanpur, as well as other locations in Uttar Pradesh, to learn about the challenges that people confront on the ground. When he drove through these settlements, he saw that solid waste disposal was a major issue.
After these studies, Nitin focused on two areas that he saw as lacking: solid waste management and industrial carbon capture.
Nitin established and registered Greengine Environmental Technologies Private Limited in 2015. But it wasn’t until two years later, armed with data and an idea, that he resigned his job and began building an incentive-based digital waste management ecosystem that offers end-to-end solutions. Greengine’s G-Recyclers, a patented device, handles it all, from incentivizing individuals to separate garbage at their homes through the ultimate stage of recycling waste.
In 2018, G-Recyclers tested their model in Ishwariganj. They were then incubated at IIT-Kanpur. They ensure waste segregation at the source, subsequent collection, and proper trash disposal. All of this is accomplished through their digital environment.
What makes G-Recyclers unique is the incentive they give for trash separation.
After the garbage is supplied in a separated fashion, consumers receive a product like tea, soap, cookie, sanitary pad, notepad, pen, spices, and detergent, or a discount at a local business. According to Nitin, this allows local companies to thrive.
There is one common material recovery facility for every six gram panchayats. One motor trolley will convey the garbage from each gram panchayat to this facility. The sorted rubbish is then sent to local recyclers in various categories.
Organic, electronic, medicinal, paper, glass, rubber, metal, and plastic garbage will be separated into eight categories (disposable and multi-layered). Thus far, they have recycled 900 kilogrammes of garbage.
Greengine was granted a government patent for its incentive-based trash management system.
In September 2018, the was incubated at IIT Kanpur’s Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre. They reproduced the idea in 20 villages surrounding Kanpur in October 2019.
Nevertheless, the operations were impeded owing to COVID.
Another difficulty was bureaucracy, but the light at the end of the tunnel is the behavioural transformation of villages, particularly women and children.
Nitin’s other major project right now is industrial carbon capture. The entrepreneur is currently creating a technique for this after working on it during his MTech in environmental engineering at IIT Kanpur. Greengine has collaborated on this idea with Indian Oil Company (IOC).
