Trash for Life
Khilda Baiti Rohmah | Social entrepreneur
Khilda Baiti Rohmah is a social entrepreneur based in Indonesia working to alleviate extreme poverty through the upcycling of waste. As a 20 year old looking to address some of the challenges that her immediate community faced, she founded Sampahkoe. Indonesia has a long tradition of handicraft and Sampahkoe has successfully adapted these craft traditions to work with non biodegradable waste materials. Working with items like toothpaste tubes, tetrapak, newspapers, pipes and plastic bottles, Khilda designs products and trains individuals and groups to make and market these. To enable the sustainability of this program, Sampahkoe also gets involved in educational activities around waste segregation and management. They have created a waste collection system and a waste bank that also brings in income to those that are only involved in collection.
She is also doing research in alternative energy through waste and is working with farmers to look at vegetable waste. In the past ten years, nearly 5000 women have been empowered by the work initiated by Khilda and they claim a reduction of waste by 20%.
This event is brought to us by The Alternatives Forum Pune and via The Beauty of Recycling campaign by eCoexist, a Pune based social enterprise that promotes eco-sensitive products through socially sensitive means. This initiative aims to highlight the aesthetic and financial potential of recycling and upcycling especially through handicrafts. They have held annual festivals to raise awareness about recycling and are currently hosting training workshops for self help groups in Pune to kick start an upcycling revolution in the city.
