column rosalind pereira quiet war against waste

People go into the sea to swim, Rosalind Pereira observes. “Then they discard their clothes on the beach and get into new clothes.” For the co-founder of Project Aamhi, a community waste management effort that enables people in 17 coastal Maharashtra villages to keep their neighbourhoods and beaches clean, this peculiar swimming habit sparked an idea.

In addition to 10 tonnes of plastic waste, Aamhi was collecting 800-900 kg of fabric every month from the beaches around Alibaug, a 20 minute speed boat ride from Mumbai’s Gateway of India for those who can afford it.

Now, apart from sending sacks of clothes to recycler Goonj, the fabric is upcycled into colourful, reinforced ‘Potli’ bags that are sold for ₹100 and distributed free to fishing communities.

As I write this, I’m looking at an azure bag with bronze sequinned embroidery and imagining the woman who abandoned her shiny wet kurta on the beach.

Pereira, 53, a graduate of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, finds ways to make big change in little things. If you have ever found yourself wondering what you could possibly do as an individual to improve the world around you, her story is inspirational.

In a world where the majority are insular and lazy, Pereira pushes for change with empathy and kindness. Maybe it was her “doer” mother who “always bustled around looking for commonsensical solutions” or her father who actively contributed to the church community, but Pereira learned early that you can’t wait around for someone else to act.

Aamhi or the ‘we’ club

Whether it’s her co-founders at Aamhi or the supportive residents of the bungalows that line the coast or the corporate funders for her programmes or the woman panchayat head who buys into all her hard work, Pereira draws partners, co-founders and like-minded individuals like moths to her flame. Aamhi, in Marathi, fittingly means ‘we’.

Most of her ideas are led by women. “I always feel that when women are included in the economic system, families develop,” she says. “A lot of women’s money is plowed back, they become independent financially and in thought, increasingly bold.”

Since 2022, Aamhi has collected 370 tonnes of waste and recycled 327 tonnes, preventing it from polluting some 750 km of coastline. It’s Pereira’s latest baby, but she has been lighting sparks everywhere for decades now.

It began with Maya Bazaar, her sustainable jewellery venture that now includes in its embrace 400 artisans. Her first sustainable venture Maya Bazaar, which she started in 1997 to preserve one craft—the art of making knotted thread jewellery—now includes in its embrace 400 artisans, including many women’s groups. While back then one large store dismissed the pieces as “work done in villages”, now the brand’s large format pieces are retailed in 35 stores and have been spotted on actors Kareena Kapoor and Shabana Azmi.

An idea can click at any time. When she found the villagers had poisoned 16 dogs during COVID-19 by feeding them vada pavs stuffed with phorate, a pesticide, she knew it was because the dogs in the area needed to be sterilised. Two surgeons in Alibaug offered to subsidise the procedure, a company supplied medicines, volunteers looked after the dogs and cleaned up. “Everything came together and worked beautifully in our favour,” she says. Nearly 1,000 dogs have been sterilised so far.

Her waste venture too, began with her roping in husband Siraj to pick up garbage from the beach down the road from their home. It grew from there, but interacting with unresponsive local bodies and working to change people’s behaviour is hard work.

The problem within

“You’ve got me at a time when I’m feeling defeated,” Pereira tells me. For the first two years Aamhi focused on cleaning public spaces and people were happy. “But what comes out comes from inside [homes] and there has been a pushback against our efforts to try to make people segregate at source,” she says. “Nobody is willing to enforce errant panchayats, it’s an unpopular move,” she says.

Aamhi collects “low-value waste” after the recyclers have picked out the bottles and other items with resale value. “The most polluting item and the hardest to recycle because it is so thin is single use plastic,” says Pereira, citing the example of a packet of Kurkure, the popular PepsiCo snack. “To collect one kg would be 333 bags of Kurkure.”

“Incentivise the picking up, or make it more expensive to produce and make the producer responsible,” she says, knowing that her unpopular ideas are unlikely to be implemented in a hurry. A study of 10 kg of plastic bags clearly identified the polluting companies, none of which work to clear waste in the area.

Pereira has a wealth of information about how the dozen or so material recovery facilities funded by the Swachh Bharat Mission in Raigad district, where she operates, don’t work, and how no local authority is willing to take on this issue despite the fact that tourism and development in the area is set to rise dramatically. “Nobody’s asking questions about the waste,” she says, adding that no legislative help is forthcoming too.

But she isn’t dissuaded. She will focus on supporters who push her to do more, and continue to encourage others to replicate the “guerilla effort” that is Aamhi. Because she doesn’t know any other way.

“I feel a huge sense of responsibility to act, to repair in whatever tiny way possible,” she says. “Change can only happen if one acts and not just observes.” Even if it’s one Kurkure packet at a time.

Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and the co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.