A restaurant where you can eat a big meal for the price of ... a kilo of plastic or have breakfast with half a kilo of bottles collected on the street. The first 'Garbage cafe' opens next month in India, in the Ambikapur Municipal District, where the poor, the homeless and the so-called "rag collectors" will be able to receive free food in exchange for garbage.
A restaurant where you can eat a big meal at the price of… a kilo of plastic or have breakfast with half a kilo of bottles collected on the street. The first 'Garbage cafe' opens next month in India, in the Municipal district of Ambikapur, where the poor, the homeless and the so-called "rag collectors" will be able to receive free food in exchange for garbage.
“Everyone is invited to donate plastic. The café will be run mainly by women… Preparations are in full swing! The mayor told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Wednesday.
An initiative strongly supported by the municipal administration with the dual aim of reducing both hungry people and plastic waste in the city:
“The solid waste management of the Ambikapur Municipal Corporation is having success and cleaning up the city. We have come up with a new provision that if someone brings a kilogram of plastic, he will get free food and with half a kilo of plastic, he will have breakfast for free. We called this "Garbage Cafe," said Ambikapur Mayor Ajay Tirkey.
The mayor is keen to clarify how the initiative fits into a broader door-to-door waste collection program already undertaken and which is beginning to bear fruit in ridding the city of waste. Also because the city has been earning around 1,2 rupees (around 19.000 euros) a month since the new management was put in place by selling recycled plastic and paper to private companies.
The Garbag Café, inspired by similar cafes that have opened in countries like Cambodia and Belgium, aims to collect and eliminate plastic from streets and landfills and reuse it to build roads and other recycled plastic infrastructure.
The initiative was enthusiastically received by the inhabitants of Ambikapur, convinced that the city will become cleaner after this initiative. Also because the "rag collectors" gave the garbage collected to private individuals in exchange for money. Now they would get free food by giving the waste to the government. All happy in short?
Not really: the initiative, in fact, has been harshly criticized by the opposition, convinced that it will be doomed to failure:
According to this initiative, the rag collector would get a free meal for one kilogram of plastic and a breakfast for half a kilogram. But currently a man gets Rs 20 in exchange for a kilogram of plastic, while the proposed scheme would provide the equivalent of Rs 1 per kg of plastic. The initiative will fail soon, ”said Janmajay Mishra, opposition leader in AMC.
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Simona Falasca
