Street vendors join initiative to ‘re-imagine waste’

Part of four-day hackathon at IISc.

There’s no escaping waste. But is it possible to engineer a better design to tackle how we manage our waste?

With this aim in mind, the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing (CPDM) at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, on Friday inaugurated a four-day event called Reimagine Waste 2.

The event will focus on waste generated by street food vendors. One of the interesting aspects of this hackathon is that it brings on board the people involved in the problem – in this case, street vendors. Every team will have one street vendor, along with designers, students and business experts. Close to a 120 participants registered on Friday.

“The teams will be given an orientation course in problem solving methods, such as design process and business model. They will have to come up with a working solution model by the closing day,” said Raghu Menon, outreach coordinator for CPDM.

At the end of the hackathon, teams will be encouraged to take up a 45-day challenge to come up with a more complete business model.

Manish Arora, assistant professor with CPDM, said that this year participants comprise a mix of design students, entrepreneurs, pourakarmikas and street vendors. “We even had some school students sign up,” he said.

On the first day, different groups went around various parts of the city to watch how street food is served and understand the problems in management. Over the next few days, they will identify a problem and come up with a prototype to fix it.