Engineering grads turn pioneers in waste management

Hyderabad: Three like-minded engineers – Nisar Ahmed, Muquayyar Ahmed and Zuber Ahmed – founded a company, Crapbin, with the lofty objective of enabling 100% waste recycling. Their primary motto is to create awareness among people regarding hazardous effects of waste on environment and also to stop recyclable waste reaching landfills.

The trio started began an innovative initiative and the first-ever platform to sell scrap online and are successfully serving in 67 areas through two branches of company at Amberpet andVasavi Kaleru Alkapur. They have a customer base of 1,800.

Crapbin offers doorstep waste collection service to households, communities and industries. It collects 30 recyclable scrap waste items. They offer to book services online for dry and recyclable waste.

Once you book a slot on any day of the week, the company will accept the free pick-up request and assign an executive to the customers based on the location as per the pin code.

Cash is paid on the existing market rates like Rs 9 per kg for newspapers, Rs 7 per kg for books and plastic and Rs 13 per kg for iron and other metal items. The prices are regularly updated on the Crapbin website.

Often the collection includes books, newspaper, paper, magazines, cardboard, glass bottles, soft plastic, plastic, steel, iron, aluminum, copper, tin, brass and electronic items.

Crapbin has a 1,700-strong customer base and has recycled 470 tonnes of dry waste. With the amount of paper the startup has recycled since its inception, the website claims to have saved 45,000 trees and 7,45,000 litres of water so far.

In terms of social impact, the company generated employment for 20 people who are senior secondary pass-outs and a part of Crapbin's profits is allocated to fund the education of underprivileged kids.

Speaking on the response of customers, Nisar Ahmed, founder of Crapbin, says, "Initially we had a plan to get 1,000 families on board and we achieved it well before the set target. Many of our customers are now using eco-friendly bags instead of plastic bags. Change in public attitude is the real achievement for us."

"Paperless billing system, presenting online invoice copy and having a dedicated staff is helping us," Ahmed adds. The trio was wondering what to do when Nisar came up with the idea of collecting scrap and thus 'Crapbin' was created, the first ever such platform in 2018.

So far, working on no profit-no loss basis, Crapbin has collected around 470 tonnes of scrap within the city and successfully sent it for recycling. "When this company was started we divided roles and responsibilities.

Nisar is taking care of operational and functional areas, Zuber online and offline marketing and Muquayyar finance and customer feedback system. Initially, we started with one warehouse at Amberpet. Later as the company was progressing, we have set up another warehouse in Alkapur from where we are serving new areas," said Nisar Ahmed, 30, a civil engineer from CBIT.

"We recycled around 470 tonnes of recyclable scrap waste including newspapers, books, cartons, plastic, iron, steel, aluminum, copper, brass, tin, batteries, tyres, cable wire, wine bottles, two-wheeler bikes and almost all kinds of electronic waste viz., mobile, laptop, modem, charger, keyboard, mouse, monitor, CPU, stabiliser, UPS and hard disk. Home appliances (refrigerator, washing machine, television, oven etc) are also collected.

The collected scrap is segregated at our yard based on the material and sent it companies as per their requirement for recycling," said Muquayyar Ahmed, 29, an electronic engineer from MGIT, who is the co-founder of Crapbin.

"We connected with people through social media platforms like twitter, facebook, Instagram, Linkedin etc.," said Zuber Ahmed, 25, a mechanical engineer from MJ Engineering College. He is also another co-founder of Crapbin.