This woman introduces eco-friendly way to dispose used sanitary napkins
Reportedly, more than 1.1 lakh kg of sanitary pad waste is generated every year in India. While disposing of the waste is of great concern for everyone, only a few act on it. Nisha Nazre, a 29-year-old woman from Bengaluru, decided to take charge and built an incinerator to dispose of this waste. The best part is it's completely eco-friendly. Here are the details.
An incident six years ago pushed Nisha in this direction
As per Nisha, when she went to throw her used pad in a garbage dump near her house six years ago, she saw a waste picker collecting used pads with his bare hands. "My mind was stuck at this fact and that was the moment I decided to find a solution to the problem of garbage piles generated from menstrual waste," she added.
Currently, normal incinerators are being used to burn sanitary napkins
According to Nisha, "The normal menstrual waste incinerators which India is scaling right now consist of just a single coil which burns the sanitary napkins." "This is equivalent to burning your sanitary napkins with a matchstick, to dispose of as these don't have any kind of filter to stop the gases produced," she added.
Even first version of her product wasn't eco-friendly
The initial incinerators that Nisha manufactured along with Vikas Jain, who is her mentor, tech partner and Managing Director of a waste management solution firm (Microteknik), used to release harmful gases into the atmosphere. In 2017, after working for about five years on developing an eco-friendly and sustainable menstrual waste disposal solution, Zuci Fem Care incinerator was created.
Zuci Fem Care incinerator uses water as the medium
Now, Zuci Fem Care incinerator consists of three filters, which treats the gases, and the medium that is used to filter them is water. "Our incinerator has features such as smoke treatment, odor treatment as well as water treatment, to make sure it is absolutely a zero-pollution causing machine," said Nisha. Moreover, the eco-friendly incinerator has the ability to dispose 50 pads at once.
The incinerator consists of two chambers for different purposes
While explaining more about the product, Nisha said that her incinerator can dispose of around 30,000 pads with 40 liters of water. Moreover, the incinerator consists of two chambers- Primary (for burning the pads) and Secondary (where the gases are filtered and neutralized). Nisha also shared the prices of two models, which are classified as per their capacity, i.e. Rs. 1,45,000 and Rs. 1,66,000.
In talks with state authorities for incinerators' installment
Nisha has already gotten the patent for the machine and is in talks with the concerned government authorities of Karnataka, Telangana, Punjab and Haryana to install these machines at waste management units. Karnataka and Telangana have already installed two and one units respectively. Nisha's future plans regarding eco-friendly solutions for medical waste disposal is the proper "solution for disposal of kids and adult diapers."
Nisha is also Founder-Chairperson of NGO, CLIP foundation
Nisha says there "is no proper way to dispose these (adult and kids diapers) either." "We can't use the sanitary napkin incinerators as human faeces require a different technology to be treated as compared to the menstrual waste," she pointed out. Nisha is also the Founder and Chairperson of the NGO, CLIP foundation, which works for the underprivileged children in the country.
