During the Fellowship, she successfully co-designed a community-led waste management system with the Monpa community of Sangti, Arunachal Pradesh. Here, she tells us more about the project and her learnings from the journey.

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Please tell us a bit about the project.

My proposed project was to co-design a community-led waste management system with the Monpa community of Sangti and document its process, successes, and failures.

Two years down the line, we now have a self-sustaining, zero-cost, community-led waste management system - deeply rooted in the Monpa way of life. There were no large-scale grants, no institutional backers. The system emerged through iteration, listening, and deep collaboration - one that the community owns, governs, and enforces.

At its core, we have co-designed a system where if everyone does their bit, waste can be managed effectively and free of cost - without overburdening anyone. Every household is responsible for segregating waste at source. The men of the village take turns to collect dry waste and transport it to the Material Recovery Facility (MRF) - not for payment, but as part of their role in the system. Over 100 SHG women carry out secondary segregation into recyclables. This collective effort is not loosely organized - it is coordinated, scheduled, and governed through the Sangti Waste Management Rules, which were co-created with the community and officially passed by the village headman.

These rules mandate participation - not just in waste segregation and collection, but also in colony-wise monthly cleanups. Non-compliance is not taken lightly; defaulters are penalised as per clearly defined community-enforced guidelines. Oversight is provided by the Village Water and Sanitation Committee (VWSC), ensuring systemic accountability at every level.

While the sale of recyclables brings in small proceeds that go to the SHG women, it is not a significant financial incentive due to the high cost of transporting waste for recycling from this remote Himalayan valley. What drives participation is the collective realisation: if we don’t solve our waste problem ourselves, no one else will.

This is a social innovation born from within the community, and it aligns with their communal way of life and existing governance systems. Importantly, the model also honours cultural rhythms. Cleanups, collection and segregation days are scheduled on the 8th, 15th, and 30th of each lunar month, aligning with Jhag Zang - Monpa holy days when farming and other activities that might harm even the smallest beings are avoided. This not only ensures participation but also strengthens cultural relevance and acceptance.

Sangti's model offers a scalable, culturally rooted solution for other remote mountain villages, where communal living and traditional governance already exist. One of the most promising aspects of this model is its potential for replication through the existing network of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM). These SHGs, present in almost every Indian village, are already structured for collective action and financial interdependence, making them ideal anchors for similar community-led waste systems across rural India.

Waste is still a relatively new challenge for many such communities - yet they have always been stewards of the environment. This model helps fill that gap, showing how waste management can be embedded into customary law and local systems.

This system is one of a kind in the country. It defies the conventional model of externally funded, tech-heavy waste solutions and instead places trust in people and processes. It shows that rural waste management doesn’t need to be outsourced - it needs to be reimagined.

By showcasing this living system - fluid, culturally grounded, and collectively upheld - we hope to challenge top-down notions of sustainability and inspire other communities to co-create their own solutions, rooted in place, culture, and shared responsibility.

Could you tell us about the most fulfilling achievements over the last two years?

Over the past two years, there have been moments of deep fulfillment and breakthroughs, along with ongoing struggles and goals still in the making. Among the big achievements, three stand out, each of them affirming the integrity and relevance of our work in Sangti.

The first was an unexpected and humbling moment of national recognition - on the 116th episode of Mann ki Baat, Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned our initiative in Sangti. This acknowledgment was not only a source of immense motivation but also a powerful validation of the bottom-up approach to sustainability we’ve been advocating.

The second major milestone was being invited by WWF to work as a consultant to replicate a similar model in Thembang, another culturally rich village in West Kameng district and a potential UNESCO World Heritage Site. The work has already begun in Thembang, and seeing the strong progress on the ground, WWF has now extended our engagement to two additional regions - Chug Valley, which comprises six villages, and Nyukmadung, which includes four settlements, both located in West Kameng district.

The third, and perhaps the most hard-fought achievement, was finally securing land for building a waste-to-resource centre in Sangti. This centre will allow us to process waste more efficiently and serve as the central hub in a hub-and-spoke model. It will aggregate segregated waste from 11 surrounding villages in the valley enabling value addition and, creating economies of scale that benefit the entire Sangti Valley.

What have been the greatest learnings that you’ll carry forward from here?

The first and most personal learning I will carry with me is this: if you believe in something deeply and commit to it with patience and integrity, it will bear fruit. When I started this journey, there was no roadmap. It was through slow immersion that I began to see the deep-rooted value of communal living practices, shared responsibilities, and traditional governance systems. I realized that these cultural strengths could become the foundation for a zero-waste, community-led waste management system.

The second learning emerged through meaningful engagements with larger networks and peer groups. I realized that while there are waste management models being implemented in some villages across the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR), there is still no example of a truly self-sustaining waste management system in a Himalayan village. While the Western Himalayas benefit from a relatively steady flow of CSR funds, the Eastern Himalayas, particularly Arunachal Pradesh, remain significantly underfunded and underrepresented in this space. 

These two years have reshaped my understanding of sustainability. Conventionally, it’s measured by a system’s ability to generate enough revenue to cover its operational costs. But in Sangti, we’re seeing something far more radical. Here, the waste management system sustains itself not through financial transactions, but through community ownership, voluntary participation, and the strength of deeply rooted social systems. In a sector where sustainability is too often reduced to balance sheets, this model is both unconventional and groundbreaking. It is a zero-cost system built on trust, pride, and shared responsibility - a living example of place-based resilience.

What were your biggest challenges over the course of this project?

The first one is a lack of core funding. We are yet to receive any major core funding for the NGO, which makes this journey extremely challenging. As we transition from being a purely field-based initiative to a more structured organization, the need for resources extends beyond just program delivery.

The second is a lack of project funding for Sangti’s waste management work. Despite building a sustainable community-led waste management system in Sangti, we have not received dedicated funding to strengthen or expand it. 

Another structural challenge has been navigating the dominant CSR narrative of “scale through volume.” Many corporate funders ask, “How many tons of waste are you managing per day?” This metric may be relevant in urban contexts but is ill-suited for ecologically sensitive Himalayan villages. Here, waste volumes are naturally lower, but the stakes are far higher. The emphasis should shift from quantity to ecological and cultural significance.

What next? What are your future plans?

Our initial identity was anchored in the Waste-to-Resource Centre - a name that, while descriptive, unintentionally made “waste” the center of our work. As our understanding deepened, so did our vision. This evolution led to the emergence of ReRoot: A Community Hub for Regenerative Living.

ReRoot is a community-rooted space that brings together the wisdom of the past and the possibilities of a regenerative future. Designed as a living, breathing ecosystem of ideas and action, ReRoot invites community members, travelers, and collaborators to reimagine progress in harmony with nature and traditional wisdom. As unchecked development and mass tourism pull rural Himalayan communities away from their ecological and cultural roots, ReRoot becomes a call to return - to live differently, consciously, and regeneratively.

ReRoot is not just a place, but a practice - one that puts planet before profit, and enables communities to co-create livelihoods rooted in care, resilience, and ecological balance. It’s a concept that captures a larger, interconnected mission, with values that shape how the space is imagined, built, and experienced- with reverence for ecology, culture, and community.

The priority now is the phased infrastructural development of ReRoot. The ReRoot model is being developed not just for Sangti, but as a replicable framework for other Himalayan villages facing similar ecological and socio-cultural threats.

You can read more about ReRoot and its components here.

You can see short videos on the project here and here.