Nature.  People.  Technology.

These are the three pillars upon which Saahas Zero Waste is built. Over the past seven years, SZW has grown into a reliable, formal waste management organisation that is currently operational across four cities – Bengaluru, Chennai, Goa & Hyderabad.

As a modern waste management company; technology, traceability, and innovation are now at the forefront of our focus.

SZW established its first Materials Recovery Facility in Bengaluru, in 2017. This 16-tonne capacity plant is one of the first such factories designed in India to manage waste formally.

At the MRF, incoming dry waste is secondary sorted into more than 20 different categories. Each category of waste is then baled and sent to authorised end destinations for recycling or co-processing. The baling of waste plays an important role in improving transport efficiency by three times. While a large truck can take only 3 tonnes of a certain unbaled stream of waste per trip, about 9 tonnes of baled waste can be sent out in the same vehicle, in one go.

The MRF enables SZW to effectively manage both high & low value waste, mitigate vehicular pollution that stems from waste-transportation, all while giving the best costs to our clients. SZW has now begun to institute greater innovations at the MRF – such as the use of AI systems to secondary sort waste. We are also taking the same model of MRF across the country in the near future.

We have also started to expand our scope in wet waste management. While composting is a timeless option for managing small quantities of wet waste to create a nutrient-rich end product, it isn’t the most optimal solution for large quantities.

Composting over 200 kg/day of wet waste is laborious, and also requires a fair amount of real estate – about 500 sq. ft. Additionally, the greater the quantum of waste to compost, the harder it gets to control the process, potentially resulting in bad odour and fly infestation. Thereby, not being the most hygienic solution, either.

With this in mind, SZW had begun hunting for more innovative wet waste management solutions – and that’s when we came across GPS Technologies, an ambitious, ecologically-inclined start-up. SZW, in partnership with GPS, offers biogas plants with patented technology that helps create a temperature-controlled environment within the biogas digester.

This helps in the production of highly-efficient biogas that could be a great substitute for LPG. In some cases, it can also be converted to electricity. The infrastructure is sleek, customizable, self-sufficient, and is capable of generating an ROI within 2-5 years.

Currently, only 19% of the total electricity generated in India come from renewable energy. And 5% of the total LPG consumption comes from biogas. However, biogas industry is placed amazingly well with India having set an ambitious target of generating about 10 GW of its energy from biomass by 2022.

SZW currently diverts 53 tonnes of waste away from landfills each day – that’s reducing 12,400 MT of GHG emissions every year. With India and the world awakening to the urgent need to move towards sustainable development, SZW is leaving no stone unturned to bring together nature, people and technology in our quest fight climate change.