How Home Grown High-Tech Can Help In Eliminating Manual Scavenging

The manual cleaning and unblocking of septic tanks, sewers and drainage systems, have long been a socially unacceptable task that has been widely condemned by the government and civil society in India.

Yet the practice continues unabated in many places — to our collective shame — mainly for lack of a viable alternative.

That excuse is no longer acceptable.

It is because this very Indian scourge has been addressed by concerned professionals.

At the 2022 edition of the Swachhata Startup Challenge organised by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, in collaboration with the French Development Agency (AFD), which concluded recently,  a robotic scavenger — claimed to be a world-first — developed by Thiruvananthapuram-based Genrobotics — was declared the top prize winner.

Named 'Bandicoot', for the animal which is known to make sewers its home, the solution also addresses the problem of employment, retraining manual scavenging personnel as robot operators, who, when positioned outside the manhole, safely control the robotic arms and legs which carry out the actual cleaning, while gas sensors provide alerts of any hazardous emissions from below. 

The Bandicoot can clean 10 manholes in a day compared to three-four by humans, leading to a saving of around Rs 8,000 a day, estimate the developers.

It is said to be superior to some sucking and grabbing machines, which are unable to tackle solid waste clogging the sewers.

In the four years since the latest model was developed, Bandicoot has been deployed in 16 states, helping in rehabilitating some 1,700 sanitary department workers. 

There are two other robotic variants — 'Wilboar'  for sewage treatment plants and 'G-Beetle' for high-rise facade cleaning.

Interestingly, Indore, which was judged India’s cleanest city for the sixth year in a row, in an announcement by the government’s Swachhata Survekshan initiative recently, has been an early user of Bandicoot.  

A spokesperson for Genrobotics told Swarajya that the company is also finding interest abroad. It has recently supplied robotic scavengers to Malaysia for deployment in Kuala Lumpur.

Other (non-scavenging) robots have been supplied to hospitals in the UK for rehabilitation of persons with physical injuries. The company is also exploring markets in South Korea and the UAE.

Genrobotics was founded in 2017 by four engineering graduates — Vimal Govind M K, Arun George, Nikhil N P and Rashid K — incubated by the Kerala State Startup Mission and operates  from the TechnoPark, in the Kerala state capital.

Other Sewage Cleaners

Other approaches to specific aspects of sewage cleaning have also been realised in India:

 - In June, Swarajya reported on a robotic septic tank cleaner, developed at IIT Madras which began as a final-year master’s project of a student, Divanshu Kumar.

Called HomoSep, it is being tried out at 10 locations in Tamil Nadu. As the name suggests, the equipment homogenises the hard sludge using a rotary blade and pumps the slurry out with an integral suction device.

- In October 2021, the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute of CSIR, based in Durgapur unveiled a mechanical scavenging system which could handle up to 300 mm pipes of length up to 100 metres. Read the Swarajya report here.

These options cater to different use scenarios, and different scales of operation. But together they hold out the hope that asking humans to perform the dangerous and degrading task of scavenging will soon — thanks to indigenous solutions — be something we can relegate to the past.

Plethora Of Waste Management Solutions

The final list of winners of the Swachhata Startup Challenge, cites 10 innovations from India’s vibrant startup ecosystem.

They range from reusing single-use plastics, to automating the kabadiwala, to recycling waste water from bathing, dishwashing and clothes washing for servicing toilets.

They competed in one of the four themes or areas of intervention: social inclusion, zero dump (eradication of legacy waste dump sites), plastic waste solutions and transparency and real-time monitoring of waste management.

Here is the full list of winners:

- Genrobotics develops robotic scavengers engineered to clean manholes and sewers, thereby eliminating manual scavenging.

- The Kabadiwala enables users to sell and schedule free pickup of over 40 different categories of recyclable wastes.

- Bintix Waste Research tracks collection, weighing, sorting and recycling of dry waste coming from each household.

- Recycler India-Saltech transforms single-use plastics, construction and industrial waste into high-performance composite building materials.

- GreenJams produces carbon-negative building materials out of crop residues and industrial by-products to replace conventional bricks.

- Mudita and Radhesh transform chicken waste into handloom cloth, which is turned into clothes and accessories by tribal women and local village artisans.

- Green Delight Innovation produces India’s first FDA-approved sanitary pads that are organic, plastic-free and biodegradable.

- KNP Arises offers a platform for hotels, restaurants and other food businesses to dispose of used cooking oil in a traceable and effective manner.

- Cherries produces a portable, multi-functional sanitation service equipment, which pumps high-density fecal and sanitary sludge from leach-pits, septic tanks and manholes.

These 10 startups will be supported with Rs 25 lakh each from the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry and AFD with a year of professional support; with up to Rs 50 lakh of follow-up investment to eligible startups from Indian social enterprise incubator, Villgro; support  by way of contacts with municipalities and up to $100,000 worth of credits from Amazon Web Services.

Swachhata Startup Challenge has compiled a booklet with details of the top 30 “cleanovation” startups who made it to the shortlist.

Details of all the innovators and their contacts can be found here.