Cleaning the world: Designers of Social Entrepreneurship

Insights: At a time when the world has transformed into a producer company, depleting the natural environment, it has evinced importance towards rethink on the waste management system. With unrestricted opportunities, it has opened avenues for social entrepreneurs to embark upon a journey for cleaning the world.

New order entrepreneurs and incumbent CEOs feel it essential to focus on the latent opportunities, still untapped. Globally, it is a considered opinion to craft a management process for waste disposal, addressing the global health issues, a key concern in a pandemic-driven world. The point is to candidly address the imbalance in public wellbeing and the increased ecological imbalance. Are you not concerned for the environment around you?    

Operating waste management services requires innovative technologies to provide efficient integrated systems & sustainable models. It also needs to be socially supported. Majorly, all Governments with respective stakeholders have been working persistently to augment resource utilization for enhanced waste management. Even India is addressing it in a big way under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. To leverage the efforts, civic bodies must compete to showcase their efforts. In between this, are latent opportunities for incumbent social entrepreneurs to capitalize upon. It’s time to save the world and make it a cleaner place to live in for exiting and generations to come.

There are Green funds available in this sector for social entrepreneurs and enterprises, who are passionate, possessing expertise in this sector. Several such social entrepreneurs with their enterprises have already accepted the dynamic challenge and have embarked on this journey. Are you one of them? 

Social Objectives

So, can you visualize what could be the social objectives? One important being if these social entrepreneurs and their incumbent enterprises are committed in their drive towards waste management? Does synergy exist between them and the ecosystem? Do they address the continuous challenge associated in bringing technologies that ramp up managing the waste disposal and management process? There are several unanswered issues, yet many companies worldwide are engaged in addressing assorted issues. The social enterprises in waste management are willingly engaged in their nature of business yet have a deluge of challenges, some of which remain unanswered.

Social entrepreneurs, the query

Despite a variety of backgrounds with these incumbent entrepreneurs and CEOs, it is difficult to capture what really makes them so passionate about the subject. For some, it is a local issue, a regional one and few have global concerns. If we see India pacing to address the issue under  Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, there are several milestones that have been covered. For them the biggest issue is in covering the sanitation and hygiene drive, enabling sustainable business practices.

These social entrepreneurs, they visualize a tremendous growth potential in years to come. After all, we all are polluting mother earth! Isn’t it? With government across the world trying their best but still need to catch up. Like corporate social responsibility, the corporates are rising, driven by passionate CEOs and new-age entrepreneurs in driving the cleantech initiative, ‘let us clean the world!’ The CEOs have a bigger challenge and utmost responsibility.

CEOs perspective

Several CEOs interviewed over a period laid emphasis on the following:

1. The ecological right for a sustainable future.
2. A strong connection between nature and culture.
3. The co-existence of humans and nature.
4. The migration of rural to urban areas has over dozed imbalance in environment and ecology.
5. Alleviation practices for climate change.
6. Lack of proper waste handling and sanitation has impacted health.
7. Waste handling and sanitation is global concern.
8. Innovative and cleantech-based technologies.
9. Recycling and logistic issues, with electronic waste rising every day.
10. Collecting, transporting, and disposing of the waste efficiently.
11. Specialized machines to handle biomining and landfilling.
12. Plastic disposal is a key concern.
13. Resource Recovery like silts can be developed to be used as biogas and Fertilizers
14. Developing new renewable energy sources and utilizing the existing areas for construction industry.…etc

With the current perspective, each CEO and the Social entrepreneur in making is spiralled around the premise as to how to see the growth potential in waste management sector?

What do we know?

Waste management is a larger segment and an umbrella comprising of waste type, its disposal technique, and ownership. The waste type comprises industrial, constructional, municipal, hazardous, Electronic & Plastic, and even Bio-medical. Their disposal systems include landfills the incineration process, dismantling, and recycling. Are you associated with anyone the above? Here is a big opportunity.

In a waste management system, it is pertinent to understand that it comprises of collection, transportation, treatment, and disposal of assorted waste products. The illegal dumping, assisted with imbalanced and surge in the population at hot spots, i.e., aimed at cities, is a global concern. How do these social entrepreneurs address it, when the center of concern is the government and the policy to de-toxify cities? De-toxification includes reducing the burden on a particular city in terms of population and economic activities, de-congesting them, and expanding to newer untouched cities. But then the waste management system still applies, to be seen from a different lens.

The global waste management market is segmented based on waste type, service, and region. By providing innovative solutions undergoing challenging dilemmas in managing waste materials, the waste management companies in the world unlike in any other industry, strive hard with their services. There are several leading waste management companies in the world.

1. Advanced Disposal Services, USA
2. Biffa Group, UK
3. Business Waste, UK
4. Clean Harbors, Inc., USA
5. Covanta Holding Corporation, USA
6. Hitachi Zosen Corporation, Japan
7. Remondis AG & Co. Kg, Deutschland
8. Republic Services, Inc, USA
9. Suez Environment S.A, France
10. Veolia Environment S.A, France
11. Waste Management Inc., USA, etc.

Each one is engaged in their own specialty area. Some ideas are replicable and many new ones may emerge depending on the area you intend to operate. As informed citizens do you find an opportunity to participate for the world to bank on your shoulders? Let us join hands in detoxifying the world making it a better and cleaner place to live.

Written by Dr. Manoj Joshi.