Tag: sustainable livelihood

Women-Led NGOs Fighting Plastic Pollution in Coastal India

The Scale of What Coastal Communities Are Facing

In parts of coastal Karnataka, local fishing boats reportedly bring in catches where plastic waste makes up nearly half of what’s pulled from the water — a daily reality for around 700,000 people living in those communities. Coastal litter in Kerala has been measured at roughly three times the global average, layering an environmental crisis directly on top of existing economic hardship.

Turning Waste Collection Into Formal Employment

Baeru, founded by Divya Hegde, trains women in coastal Karnataka to run structured waste collection and segregation systems rather than leaving the work informal and unpaid. The initiative has helped divert large volumes of waste from contaminating the coast and the Western Ghats while creating predictable income — with social security — for over 150 women who were previously working without either protection.

Kerala’s Self-Help Group Model

In Kerala, where coastal litter runs unusually high and female workforce participation runs unusually low, projects like rePurpose’s Hara Kal have built almost entirely women-led (over 98 percent) first-mile plastic collection networks in partnership with local self-help groups. The model treats plastic interception and women’s income generation as the same project, not two separate goals.

Kudumbashree: A Template Built Two Decades Ago

Kerala’s Kudumbashree network, a state-run women’s self-help group system established in 1998, has become the backbone many newer waste-management initiatives build on — organizing women into enterprises that now also produce plastic alternatives and manage municipal waste operations under formal government partnership.

Bottom Line

The most durable answers to coastal plastic pollution in India aren’t just cleanup drives — they’re systems that pay women fairly to do work that was already happening informally, and give that work the infrastructure to actually scale.

Women Beekeepers of India: Sweetening Livelihoods Sustainably

A Livelihood That Fits Around Everything Else

Beekeeping has an underrated advantage for rural women: it doesn’t compete with existing responsibilities the way a full-time job might. Hives can be tended in the early morning or evening, fitting around farm work and household duties, which is part of why self-help groups across states like Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, and Bihar have adopted it as a collective income source.

The Nilgiris Model

In the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, a beekeeping initiative trained Indigenous women from communities that had traditionally practiced wild honey hunting — a skill that’s both risky and increasingly restricted under forest protection laws. Managed beekeeping using hive boxes gave the same women a safer, more predictable version of a craft they already understood, using native bee species suited to the local ecosystem.

From Bihar’s Farmlands to Family Income

In Muzaffarpur district, Bihar, a group of women from below-poverty-line families who previously worked as temporary farm hands started an all-women beekeeping enterprise to build a steadier income stream. Their story reflects a broader pattern — beekeeping enterprises frequently start with a handful of women pooling resources and scale through shared training and equipment.

More Than Honey

Beyond income, the ecological ripple effect is real: more managed hives mean better pollination, which supports crop yields and biodiversity in the surrounding area. Several beekeeping programs pair training with tree-planting to strengthen the nectar and pollen sources hives depend on — a rare case where the economic and environmental incentives point the same direction.

Bottom Line

Beekeeping isn’t a novelty project in rural India anymore — it’s a functioning income model that’s letting women earn on their own terms while quietly supporting the ecosystems around them.