‘RUP’ Centre – Recycling & Upcycling of Plastics Centre
Recycling & Upcycling of Plastics, i.e. ‘RUP’ Centre is our micro-unit in Noida, Uttar Pradesh is an attempt to upcycle plastic waste into high value products while simultaneously generating sustainable livelihood opportunities for women & youth belonging to the waste picking community. The ‘RUP’ Centre is capable of recycling HDPE (Hard Plastics) and LDPE (Soft Plastic) waste through our training and upskilling of waste workers into artisans capable of producing upcycled fashion and home decor products. The model of ‘RUP’ Centre enables not just environmental impact from upcycling plastic waste but also provides social and economical impact through upliftment, mobility, dignity of work, income increase, and creating economic resilience.
Started in 2018, the ‘RUP’ Centre is fully equipped to impart training for both HDPE and LDPE with our ‘waste to value’ technology along with capacity building for waste pickers as community enterprise and its operations. The production centre allows waste workers to be engaged directly as artisans for the centre, fully trained and supported by Conserve. The centre also becomes a focal point for engagement with community of waste workers, recyclers, and marginalised communities in the area for mobilisation, outreach, donation drives, social impact workshops, and provide relief during emergent situations.
Project Supported By → Ashoka France, HSBC Bank, PlastiSkul, Sud Chemie
PlastiSkul
PlastiSkul is an international consortium of social entrepreneurs spread across 6 countries. It is a collaborative, innovation led approach to the global problem of plastic pollution by delivering localised solutions. Innovation technologies and expertise in the domain of ‘waste to value’ approach have been brought in from Conserve (India), Fablabs Saigon (Vietnam), Lwanda Biotech (Kenya), Tatakaka Plastics (Uganda), WAO Architecture (France), Fourthline Ltd (Zambia), and Volumes (France).
PlastiSkul aims to ignite a circular model sustainability for plastic waste at ground level through a mobile micro-factory platform aimed at building micro-entrepreneurship, value addition, capacity building, and awareness. PlastiSkul provides a catalogue of programs and services that can be leveraged to create maximum social impact possible through in-depth understanding of the region. Decentralisation of intervention in plastic waste can foster a culture of circularity, be efficient in terms of quality and costing, minimise transport emissions and landfills, provide impetus to social entrepreneurs, and act as an instrument of social change.
Project Supported By → Perrier, So Science, Make Sense
Capacity Building & Micro-Entrepreneurship in Kashmir
The goal of the project is to establish 1 group of 30 individuals who would be trained and upskilled in producing products by recycling and upcycling plastic and textile waste to produce fashion, stationery, and home decor products. This is complemented with a thorough capacity building in business functions, marketing, handholding support, and formalisation as a community enterprise to ensure the group’s long-term sustainability. The 6 months project would be implemented in 3 phases focusing on holistic capacity building of the group with the ‘Initialising’ phase establishing the groundwork, ‘Implementation’ phase for imparting core training, ‘Enterprise Creation & Formalisation’ phase where the group would be organised as an enterprise with our continued support, monitoring, and mentoring.
The project enables training and upskilling for individuals to transform them as artisans capable of leveraging waste as a resource, designing sustainable products, and generating dignified livelihood for themselves. The initiative ushers in opportunities for women and youth of marginalised communities to upskill themselves as entrepreneurs for a highly scalable business. The project also creates additional social impact and sensitisation of the group and the community through ‘Specialised Workshops on Social and Environmental Issues’ which focuses on the larger community on menstrual hygiene, gender equality, WASH, waste management,reproductive health, etc.
Project Supported By → HDFC Bank, Indian Army
Assessing the Social Impact of Circular Economy in the Textiles Value Chain
The flower SIAF-CE⚥. Each layer of petals represents one social dimension, and each petal represents an indicator. Outside layers represent the socio-cultural context and power dynamics
We at Conserve India, have partnered with the University of Utrecht, Netherlands to work on a research project on Circular Economy(CE) Strategies spanning over three countries (India, Spain, The Netherlands).
This joint research project aims to assess how the implementation of CE strategies affects the quality of jobs, gender equality and the livelihood of male and female workers throughout the global and local fashion value chain. For this particular project, our intention is to gather perspectives from garment workers, managers and business owners to identify barriers and design recommendations to multiply the social impact in the CE space.
We have published 2 papers in Netherlands and have a special paper focusing on India coming out soon!
1st publication: The Social impact Assessment Framework for Circularity
2nd Publication ( Peer reviewed): Assessing the Social Impact of Circular Strategies in the Textile and Apparel Value Chain; a Comparative Analysis between Three Countries.
Supported by University of Utrecht and partners
