Waste administration staff stand outdoors a waste processing plant in Bengaluru, India. By formalizing the waste assortment course of, the 'I Obtained Rubbish' digital platform reworked waste staff into micro-entrepreneurs. (Suchit Ahuja), Creator offered
Digital platforms equivalent to Uber, Airbnb, WeChat and TaskRabbit have modified the world by creating new financial alternatives by means of gig work tradition and enabling a sharing economic system. Nevertheless, issues stay about how these platforms could exploit gig staff and prospects if pushed purely by revenue.
Whereas these platforms are nice at creating worth by bringing consumers, sellers and customers collectively, their advantages typically don’t transcend to their ecosystem. They’ve been criticized for his or her poor social and environmental impacts, exclusionary practices, digital colonialism and surveillance capabilities.
To leverage the facility of platforms for social good, it’s essential to design socially-oriented platforms inside ecosystems of shared worth that focus on the UN’s sustainable improvement objectives.
To deal with sustainable improvement objectives, platforms want to vary from being solely targeted on income and worth appropriation, to perceiving themselves as public items that innovate responsibly by co-creating and sharing financial, social and environmental worth.
Whereas that is simpler stated than finished, some organizations have begun the method.
A brand new non-profit
Business platforms are anticipated to earn an estimated $60 trillion by 2025. In the meantime, the Platform Commons Basis — an Indian non-profit that builds inclusive platforms to deal with international grand challenges — is concentrated on creating social worth, whereas financial worth is secondary.
The Platform Commons Basis has launched various platforms targeted on sustainable improvement objectives equivalent to poverty alleviation, offering high quality schooling and respectable work, enhancing financial progress and lowering inequalities.
One of many Platform Commons Basis’s many platforms — I Obtained Rubbish — reworked the lives of underpaid and marginalized waste administration staff in India’s casual sector, who confronted frequent harassment and exploitation, by serving to them earn a gentle revenue and a dignified livelihood.
One other platform — Commons.farm — is an agritech platform that gives equitable and accessible providers to smallholder farmers that face challenges throughout the agricultural provide chain.
Smallholder farmers make up 80 to 90 per cent of India’s agriculture. But, they personal lower than 5 acres of land and often develop solely two crops a 12 months. They’re typically unable to search out consumers for his or her produce, forcing them to solely promote by means of middleman managed markets.
Let’s take a better take a look at these platforms.
Revolutionizing waste administration
I Obtained Rubbish turned the casual waste assortment course of into a proper course of. The platform consists of an ecosystem of 1000’s of residents, authorities and municipal officers, non-governmental organizations, waste employee communities and different establishments.
By formalizing the waste assortment course of, I Obtained Rubbish reworked waste staff into micro-entrepreneurs who can earn sustainable wages and defend themselves from exploitation.
I Obtained Rubbish did this by means of a number of know-how interventions. A few of these interventions embrace the I Obtained Rubbish app that runs on low-cost cellphones, SMS and WhatsApp-based communications in numerous Indian languages, waste and recycling administration planning software program, customer support coaching, offering uniforms and identification badges, geotagging places for waste pick-up and monitoring wages.
Waste staff separate paper and plastic on a conveyor belt in a recycling facility in New Delhi, India in September 2019. The ‘I Obtained Rubbish’ digital platform turned the casual waste assortment course of into a proper course of.
(Shutterstock)
I Obtained Rubbish labored with the group of waste staff to grasp their issues and achieve their belief. It additionally signed households up for its providers by way of Fb and SMS/WhatsApp campaigns.
I Obtained Rubbish made a big influence because it lowered landfill waste by 40 per cent and processed greater than 10,000 tons of recycling supplies each day in a single metropolis. It employed greater than 15,000 waste staff and expanded to a number of cities in lower than 5 years since its inception.
I Obtained Rubbish has led to a revolution of waste administration and recycling in India which is ready to be replicated in 72 international locations in Asia and Africa.
Empowering farmers and stopping suicide
The Indian agricultural sector suffers the identical fragmentation and casual course of points because the waste administration sector.
Productiveness points, corruption and provide chain points inside India’s agricultural sector are so stark they’ve precipitated a suicide epidemic amongst debt-ridden smallholder farmers. Over 10,000 farmers died in 2020 alone in response to the federal government.
The scenario was dire and wanted intervention on the grassroots stage.
The Platform Commons Basis launched Commons.farm in 2019 to help farmers and regional governments in and round Bengaluru. The thought was the identical as I Obtained Rubbish, aside from the income mannequin — empowering farmers by connecting them with one another to kind co-operatives, resolving agriculture provide chain points, enabling communication amongst farmers, governments and markets, and enhancing social and environmental influence.
An Indian farmer carries turnips after harvesting them from a subject in Kanachak village, on the outskirts of Jammu, India in February 2021.
(AP Photograph/Channi Anand)
This is able to empower smallholder farmers with digital instruments to scale back waste, reduce out corruption and talk straight with suppliers and prospects.
The platform obtains its major revenues from authorities subsidy applications as an alternative of charging farmers for providers. Native and state governments that use Commons.farm obtain assured influence outcomes from the cash they spend on the platform, which is a fraction of the general subsidy invoice they might in any other case incur.
Sustainable use of digital platforms
Platforms like I Obtained Rubbish and Commons.farm that additionally deal with sustainable improvement objectives are gaining consideration. The FRANCIS undertaking, for instance, hosts open innovation challenges in Europe that contain residents, scientists and teachers. Its intention is to develop inexpensive improvements that deal with real-world challenges.
Residents can be a part of the challenges by way of the net platform or in face-to-face occasions. Scientists run workshops throughout the challenges that supply methodology coaching. This undertaking is at the moment engaged on a photo voltaic disinfection undertaking concentrating on low- to middle-income households in rural areas, folks in refugee camps and micro-entrepreneurs.
The Indian authorities has additionally created its personal set of public platforms that it calls the India Stack. It has constructed a biometric digital identification platform, a real-time cell cost platform, a COVID-19 vaccine information platform and an open and inclusive e-commerce platform.
Digital platforms can be utilized as non-public pipelines that allow monopolies or they can be utilized as open, inclusive mechanisms leveraged for the general public good.
By studying from examples which have leapfrogged frequent platform pitfalls to deal with the general public good, we are able to transfer in the direction of an equitable and empowering model of digital transformation. We have now the chance to emulate these profitable examples in our personal contexts.
Suchit Ahuja receives funding from FRQSC and SSHRC.
Yolande E. Chan receives funding from SSHRC.
