1. Waste Is Gold Waste is Gold, founded by Sandeep Tiwari and based in Bengaluru, is a waste management company that transforms wet waste, ranging from 20 kg to 10 tonnes, into 'nutrient-rich compost' in just eight hours—all without emitting harmful emissions.

They developed an organic waste composter called the ‘Gold Composter’. The company converts 800 kg of organic waste on a daily basis.

2. Greengine Environmental Technologies While Nitin Srivastava was on a research project in the villages of Uttar Pradesh, he realised how waste management was a big problem for the villagers. A graduate in environmental engineering, Nitin decided to do something about it and started Greengine Environmental Technologies.

He developed G-Recyclersan, an incentive-based digital waste management ecosystem, wherein villagers bring their segregated waste to the collection hubs and get incentives like tea, soap, biscuit, sanitary pad, notebook, pen, spices, and detergent, or a discount at a local store.

3. ScrapUncle Are you tired of the unending arguments with your kabadiwala (scrap dealer)? A 25-year-old from Delhi, Mukul Chhabra is here with his startup, SracpUncle to solve this issue.

With his startup, you can collect your waste, book an appointment and sell it to them at a pre-decided price. ScrapUncle has collected 2,000 tonnes of scrap from the Delhi-NCR region with over 22,000 pickups so far.

4. Nirmalaya Concerned about the increasing temple waste in the river Yamuna, 34-year-old Bharat Bansal quit his career in law to start Nirmalaya. It is a startup that converts floral waste from temples into organic incense sticks, cones, havan cups, among others.

The social enterprise has tied-up with over 300 temples in Delhi and they recycle up to 500 tonnes of floral waste annually.

5. Goodeebag Similar to what Nitin is doing in the villages of Uttar Pradesh, Abhishek Aggarwal is doing in the city of Hyderabad. He realised that the main cause of increasing plastic waste in landfills was the low rate of segregation at household levels.

He started Goodeebag, which collects your dry waste from your home and gives you redeemable points in return. Consumers can use these points to buy groceries from the Goodeebag app. Once collected, the dry waste is sent to recycling centres.