Maheshwari talks about how she got into collecting waste hair, picking up waste hair from streets and also by going house to house, bartering for waste hair with small household items and also offering money. She and her fellow workers buy hair by weight, collecting small quantities and over time, sell in bulk.
Did you know that grey hair have a lesser rate than black hair? Maheshwari also upcycles waste hair by making wigs from this collected hair.
Bengaluru's flooding story often circles around its age-old stormwater drainage system conflicting with rapid urbanisation. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been actively utilising data from flood alert systems, but only for rescue and evacuation, and not for mapping flood patterns or preventing floods. Also, though the data is publicly accessible, little is being done to create public awareness about it. “I was stuck in a traffic jam three kilometres away from my office in Manyata Tech Park when I got an office alert about inundation there. If only flooding information was timely and accessible, it would save so…
Following the disastrous deluge that hit Mumbai on July 26, 2005 and claimed 419 lives, the state introduced several measures to prevent such flooding in the future in Mumbai. The Chitale Committee, which was commissioned to find solutions for flooding in Mumbai recommended a series of measures, such as improving Mumbai’s hydrological planning to help the city’s rivers find their way into the sea and prevent them from overflowing into the city and endangering lives during the heavy Mumbai monsoons. While this exercise mostly called for rejuvenating the rivers, one of the first moves by the authorities involved building retaining…