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Kachra Cafe Bhopal Photograph: (Kachra Cafe Bhopal)
The Bhopal Municipal Corporation has established a ‘Kachra Cafe’ near Bhopal’s 10th number market, encouraging residents to trade waste newspapers, cardboard, plastic, and other materials for works of art & craft or food.
What is Kachra Cafe?
Kachra Cafe is a one-of-a-kind sustainability centre where environmental responsibility meets community rewards.
It has been founded on the belief that recycling should be both fun and rewarding,
The cafe accepts various kinds of waste, including e-waste (from cell phones to refrigerators), broken chargers and mobile phones, single-use plastics, paper bags, milk packets, polythene, boxes, clothes, newspapers, cardboard, and everything in between.
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How it works?
As soon as the waste is deposited, it is weighed at the cafe and on the basis of the weight, it transfers ‘Kachra Currency’ to the customer’s mobile phone through SMS.
Now, a customer can use the currency to buy anything from the cafe.
You can buy the art and craft from the store or have snacks from the redemption centre present with the premises of Kachra Cafe.
The cafe uses the tagline - “Turn your trash into treats”.
The cafe’s website describes itself as: “We’re not just a garbage collection point — we’re a mission-driven social enterprise working to solve two big problems.”
Kachra Cafe solving 2 big problems
The 2 big problems the cafe addresses are -
The lack of responsible, everyday recycling
The lack of motivation or incentives for people to do it
As reported by Bhaskar English, BMC officials said that over half of Bhopal’s plastic waste comprises banned plastic items, making waste processing both difficult and costly. Additionally, other materials like metal, lead, and paper are often mixed in. So, the Kachra cafe will streamline the segregation process, making it easier to treat and recycle these materials effectively.
Notably, Chhattisgarh was the first state in India to introduce the Kachra Cafe in Ambikapur city, which was led by the Ambikapur Municipal Corporation.