The problem Conscious solves

We all know Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. But what about Sustainable Bharat Abhiyan? Thousands of people, ‘dispose’ their plastic, paper, glass, electronic and metal waste to kabadiwalas everyday. However, in over 50% of the cases, it is not safely recycled or disposed of. We are keeping our streets and homes clean at the expense of landfills filled with tonnes of toxic waste. There are many apps teaching users how to do recycling or disposing, but they fail when it comes to a structured and feasible solution for the same.

Conscious is a step forward in this direction. From large-scale waste to household-scale waste, Conscious provides a sustainable, easy and efficient solution to recycling and disposing plastic, paper, metal, glass and electronic wastes. It provides pickup of such waste right on the doorstep.
As for motivation, customers are given reward coins in proportion to the amount and type of waste. This is redeemable in different categories like electronics, restaurant discounts etcetera.

Also, Conscious is currently in the ideation phase. The backend isn't coded yet.

Challenges I ran into

I knew that there definitely would be resistance if the users were to pay for collection of their waste. Thus, the option of getting any fee from the users themselves was off the table. There was the question of the source of the funding for the whole structure. I also had some apprehensiveness as to WHY the users would want to get their waste recycled when they can get a handsome price for their waste by the kabadiwalas.

Then I remembered the endless loops of Shark Tank India that I watched in the past month. And it struck me that there could always be the ‘ads-cum-rewards’ system. Revenue could be sourced from ad interaction and by paying for a premium subscription model of the app that could unlock options for more rewards and no-ads version. This also solved the motivation problem by giving discounts as a form of rewards to users.