The Plastic Revolutionary: How a Janakpur Housewife Built a Recycling Empire : From Kitchen Experiments to 8-Ton Daily Operations - Sita Devi's War on Waste
Sita Devi's hands tell the story - burn scars from melting plastic bags in her kitchen in 2008, now steering a 4-acre recycling plant processing Nepal's garbage tsunami. After losing her son to dengue spread by landfill mosquitoes, this illiterate mother invented a low-tech plastic shredder using bicycle parts. Her "Waste Mothers Collective" now employs 137 ragpicker women transforming trash into construction materials. The numbers stagger: 28 million plastic bottles diverted from rivers, 19 schools built from recycled bricks, and a patented plastic-road technology being adopted by 17 municipalities. "They called me mad when I sorted trash," laughs Sita, whose workers now earn 4x minimum wage with health insurance. Her latest mission? Converting Kathmandu's sacred Bagmati River sludge into organic fertilizer.
