These Indian Cafes Let You Pay With Garbage: 1 Kilo Of Plastic Gets You Rice, Two Curries And Dal

These Indian Cafes Let You Pay With Garbage: 1 Kilo Of Plastic Gets You Rice, Two Curries And Dal

In the Indian city of Ambikapur, several Garbage Cafes will give a person an entire four-course meal if they bring 1 kilo of plastic waste with them.

Feeding on average 20 people a day, it’s a clever and distinctly Indian way of clearing two hurdles in one jump: that of hunger among the lower classes, and that of plastic litter in its cities.

Not that Ambikapur, in central India’s Chhattisgarh state, is particularly unkempt; it’s earned a reputation as the “city of no landfills.” But part of earning that reputation was coming up with great ideas like the Garbage Cafe.

Generating 226 metric tons of plastic waste per day, Ambikapur citizens and businesses recycle almost all of it already, but for the bits and pieces that slip through the cracks, locals like Rashmi Mondal can hunt them down, gather them up, and feed her whole family.

2.2 pounds of plastic trash like snack wrappers and water bottles will get you rice, two curries, dal, roti bread, and salad.

While Indian urban planners may not have the money to pay for sophisticated trash collection regimes and recycling machines, they can leverage a near-endless supply of cheap labor.

Small-time recyclers dot the city, and they used to pay the poor or homeless for plastic they collected. But at 10 rupees per kilo, it might require a whole day’s work to earn enough for the meal they can get at the Garbage Cafe.

“I can get food for my family in exchange for the plastic I collect. It makes all the difference in our lives,” Mondal told a BBC reporter visiting a Garbage Cafe.

The cafe is run by the Ambikapur Municipal Corporation (AMC), which is Indian parlance for what we in America would call a government sponsored enterprise: basically a corporate structure put together to carry out functions in place of a government bureau.

ALSO CHECK OUT: City in India Ranks the Cleanest 8 Years in a Row: ‘It Feels as Though You Aren’t in India’

Vinod Patel, the AMC employee who manages the Garbage Cafes, said that on average they feed 20 people a day, translating to 20 kg, or 44 pounds of plastic waste.

“If food is available in place of plastic, we’re not only helping to fill empty stomachs but also contributing to cleaning up the environment,” Patel told the BBC.

MORE GOOD INDIA NEWS: New Bamboo Plantations Are Healing Villages Choked by Toxic Ash from Coal Plants in India

The BBC story also reported in detail the extent of recycling operations in Ambikapur, which combine door-to-door waste collection with neighborhood recyclers employing 50,000 women, all of which has allowed the city to eliminate the need for a landfill or dumping ground in city limits.

The author of the report, Hazra Khatoon, also listed a number of other cities where Garbage Cafes can be found; and they’re not all in India, Cambodia has also replicated the idea.