Giving Compass' Take:

• Social entrepreneur, Rohit Nayak, discusses his plans to create sustainable alternatives to plastic bags as a way to address India's plastic crisis.

• While this social impact project focuses on one issue in one country, how can social entrepreneurship help inform global development models on a worldwide scale?

•  Here are the 35 social entrepreneurs to watch for in 2019. 

Upon seeing children in urban slums playing amidst a heap of plastic garbage, social entrepreneur Rohit Nayak made it his mission to create sustainable alternatives to plastic bags, and empower disadvantaged communities to be active champions combating India’s waste management crisis.

While India’s consumption of plastic equals only half of the global average, the country grapples with some of the world’s worst levels of waste mismanagement. Much of the country’s recycling sector is informal and unregulated, operating without government oversight. Every day, India generates 33.1 million pounds of plastic waste of which only 19.8 million pounds are collected and recycled, leaving the rest to contaminate waterways, clog drains, poison animals and cause soil degradation.

Recognizing the devastating impact of India’s plastic scourge, Nayak set up EcoAd, which offers upcycled alternatives to plastic bags made out of newspaper and other paper scrap, and creates sustainable employment opportunities for women in underprivileged communities in the process.

To date, EcoAd has replaced an estimated 10 million plastic bags and upcycled 800 tons of post-consumer-waste, while providing livelihood opportunities to over 1700 marginalized women.

To maximize its social and environmental impact, similarly open source softwares, EcoAd employs a copyleft business model. The social venture has so far received 250 franchise enquiries, and over half a million people have used its online training content to replicate EcoAd bags across South Asia.

Read the full article about addressing India's plastic waste crisis by Trang Chu Minh at Causeartist.