By Shafeeq Hudawi, TwoCircles.net
Kozhikode: What do you notice the most when you visit cities like Delhi and Mumbai? The bustle of these cities, the endless flow of people on the streets, or the tall buildings? For 26-year-old Jabir Karat, a resident of Kozhikode, it was the pile of wastes that cluttered and choked these cities which were most visible. So, he decided that he would try to save his own city, Kozhikode, from facing a similar future even though he had little experience in this field.
Jabir came to the Capital in 2007 to pursue his education, and enrolled in Zakir Hussain College, Delhi University, in the History stream and followed it by completing his Masters from Delhi University. It was during his college days that Jabir spent some time in Mumbai, where he worked for the educational empowerment of slums after receiving Gandhi fellowship by Kaivalya Education Foundation of New Delhi. This period turned out to be a turning point in Jabir’s life. During his stay, Jabir had to visit slums, surrounded by dumping yards.
“It was Mumbai, which instigated the thought about a clean and green India. I knew that the country was being urbanized and industrialized, leading to the production of huge wastes. But the lack of an effective mechanism to manage the mounting wastes had earned our country the bad reputation of being one of the world’s most polluted countries. I wanted to rectify that image,” the 26-year-old said. So, in 2014 he returned to Kozhikode and started Green Worms.
Jabir’s entrepreneurship now has a turnover of Rs 15 lakh a month. The company, which has been registered as a sustainable NGO, has 48 employees and an 18,000 square feet unit to deal with the waste collected from households, events, restaurants, hospitals and local self-governing bodies.
For Jabir, managing waste is not a mere job to earn profits. It’s a mission for a good cause, which he terms social entrepreneurship.
“People were staring at me when I started this initiative. They wondered why a History student wanted to do something. But I didn’t care because I was well aware of my duties to the country,” Jabir says.
But conceptualising a business plan is nothing compared to getting finances for the same. Jabir is the son of a daily wage labour and hence found it tough to get the finance for his initiative. Fortunately, Jabir found an investor in his friend and relative Shameer Babu. Shameer invested the initial capital of Rs 6 lakh.
Now in its third year, Jabir’s clients include 38 residential apartments, eight hospitals, 80 residents associations, three panchayats and 18 hotels. Jabir’s employees collect waste from these places and segregate it at his unit at West Hill in Kozhikode. Food waste is converted to fertilizers for organic farming while plastic is recycled. Unrecyclable plastic is handed over to construction firms to make tar. Besides this, Jabir is also running workshops to train people hosting big events how to minimise food wastage.
In a recognition of his initiative, Kerala Finance Minister Dr. Thomas Isaac visited Green Worms last year and wrote a long post on his Facebook page hailing Jabir and his work. If all things go as planned, Jabir will sign a MoU with the district administration to scientifically dispose of the waste produced by the entire Kozhikode.