Cash For Trash & Waste Education for 200 Families

Bumi Sehat's Cash for Trash and Waste Education programs are successfully changing behaviour in our small village. People are preparing in advance for the monthly trade-in by sorting out their trash into different groups: organic, non organic and plastic. The plastic waste and organic waste will make cash for the family through the waste bank program. People in our village are starting to understand the economic and environmental benefit of not discarding waste.

Many people in our village also sort and save glass and cardboard as there are other sites that will pay people for those materials. We joke that when someone gets a package, people will ask them, "Can I have the cardboard and the plastic packaging? Please don't throw them away." Some women who work as maids outside the village ask their employers if they can take the waste home instead of throwing it away. One woman sorts all her plastic to give to her helper, knowing her maid can get cash for it instead of it being thrown away.

Our community initiative is helping to change local people’s behavior by keeping, sorting and trading in waste materials. This is creating economic benefit for many families.

In our Youth Waste Education Program, we are teaching local kids about how to use compost in the garden to grow food. We have a composter in the Bumi Sehat kitchen that turns all our food waste into compost. This is a great example to show the kids and they are getting motivated to bring their family food waste to Bumi Sehat or to start making compost themselves at home.

Here are some photos of our youth student participants planting snd gardening, using compost from Bumi Sehat kitchen and garden.