Replicable “Zero garbage” Green kitchen

A social entrepreneur passionate about children’s nutrition and green lifestyle, Tejaswini is involved in all aspects of Adamya Chetana (www.adamyachetana.org), an NGO she founded and led for more than two decades.  

Her work has positively impacted millions of children

• Every day, nutritious midday meals are served to over 150,000 under-privileged school children. In total, Adamya Chetana has served 500 million meals 
• Food is prepared in a zero garbage, fossil-fuel free kitchen
• Nature-Science Internship Programme for children on sustainability
• 230+ consecutive Green Sundays planting saplings, motivating numerous citizens to plant trees 
• Designed models for ecologically sustainable village development

A founder Trustee of Sri Shankara Cancer Foundation, which works on prevention and affordable cancer treatment, she has worked as a scientist on the development of Tejas Light Combat Aircraft

She holds an engineering degree in Electronics and PG Diploma in Indology.  

She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for Social Work.

In 2003, linking academic excellence to healthy nutrition, Adamya Chetana started delivering midday meals for under-privileged students.  Today, bolstered by overwhelming positive results, Adamya Chetana works with the government to deliver nutritious mid-day meals to 150,000+ under-privileged school children from 4 kitchens in 2 states.

These meals were just the beginning of innovation.  Tejaswini’s scientific approach to continuous improvement and innovation  led to 

• Transforming the kitchen in Bengaluru to a zero garbage and fossil-fuel free kitchen 
• Using connect with young children to educate them on sustainability through colourful wall magazine and green internship programs
• Extending the green concept from the kitchen to the dining table by eliminating disposable plates/cutlery from large events by creating a free plate-bank 

This concept has inspired many other kitchens, big and small to strive to replicate the green kitchen model. Adamya Chetana is a source of advice and guidance to these kitchens.   

Tejaswini is focused on solving a two interconnected problems.  

●      First, the poor nutrition of under-privileged children leading to poor health, poor educational outcomes and poor job prospects

●      Second, the pressing need to develop more sustainable ecological solutions to the damaging environmental consequences of day to day life (such as food, garbage and fuel).  

In government schools in India, the students come from poverty and struggle to achieve educational goals.  In particular, many girls were dropping out early.  When Tejaswini studied this in the 90s through mass health check campaigns, she realized the critical need for poor nutrition and saw an opportunity to provide better nutrition while teaching children about sustainability and the environment.  By educating children on sustainability , Adamya Chetana has taken the opportunity to impact generations.  

An integrated project has gradually evolved to address 

• Poor nutrition of under-privileged children
• Changing the mindset of children, teachers and citizens to make green lifestyle integral to their daily lives
• Adamya Chetana started nutritious mid-day meals to under-privileged school children in 2003. Over the next few years, this improved attendance, health and academic outcomes (from maximum 60% to over 90% marks) of students.
• Bengaluru kitchen moved from fossil fuels to solar power, bio-briquettes and gas produced by kitchen waste
• Became zero garbage kitchen by eliminating all waste and reusing everything including water reuse in watering plants
• Publish wall magazine on simple changes to help their neighbourhood become sustainable and trigger critical thinking through interesting questions
• Kitchen to Dining table: Setting up a unique plate-bank with tens of thousands of steel plates, cutlery that anyone can borrow free for events to eliminate disposables
• Organise annual Nature-Science test and internship focusing on sustainability

Results were visible in practice:

Multiple initiatives to spread green lifestyle:

Through leading by example

Through engagement with others

Adamya Chetana teams regularly visit schools as well as invite students and other citizens to visit Adamya Chetana and participate in programs.

The project serves under-privileged school children attending government schools and the society

●      touches lives of 150,000 such students daily. 500+ million nutritious mid-day meal have been served till date benefitting 500,000+ students.

●      Directly and indirectly benefited the society where we operate by increasing adoption of a green lifestyle

Impact on the beneficiaries

●      Better nutrition helped students achieve higher educational outcomes. Students in these schools struggled to reach 60% but now many reach 90+% marks. Passing rate has improved from 40% to 90+%.

●      Helped them make small changes in their daily lives. e.g. thousands of children participate in increasing green cover in the city, decreasing electricity consumption, reducing water wastage, etc. in their homes

●      Tens of thousands of saplings have been planted - every Sunday is a Green Sunday for the last 230+ Sundays. This has enthused hundreds of local groups take up planting trees in their own areas. 

●      Thousands of events have gone green by using the free Plate-bank and eliminating disposable plates, cutlery, etc. Every day, 2 to 3 events request usage of plate-bank. Motivated by us, multiple plate-banks have been set up by others.

●      A 360 degree approach of demonstrating results in our Green kitchen and handholding others

●      230+ consecutive green Sundays planting trees across localities motivated thousands to follow 

●      Thousands have made their events green by eliminating disposable plates, cutlery, etc. by using free plate-bank facility. Many others have now set up similar plate-banks

●      Mega-event “Seva Utsava” and other events where hundreds of thousands visit where awareness and adaption of green lifestyle is a prominent topic

●      Taking a bold step of “eliminating fossil-fuels” rather than just “reducing” drives action by catching attention and motivating others to implement 

“Paakashala (kitchen) – Prayogashala (laboratory) – Paathashala (school)” has been the underlying theme of this journey of exploration and inovation. Kitchen became the laboratory for innovative experiments and transformed itself in to a school in imparting lessons in nutrition and sustainability to us, students and the society.

It all started in 1997 when Tejaswini became concerned with poor academic performance of children in government schools and high rate of girls dropping out of school. Investigation led her to conclude that

●      Children have very little energy to study. Poor health was identified as the reason

●      Health checks identified that poor nutrition was the root cause

●      Unhygienic and polluted living conditions was noted as an additional cause

A small pilot project was undertaken to supply simple nutritious mid-day meal to a few thousands of children in the neighbourhood. This yielded excellent results – student attendance went up and results became better.

Gradually, over the years, outreach and action-oriented programmes around health, hygiene, green lifestyle were launched. Each of these programmes was first implemented in Adamya Chetana, run successfully, results verified and then using that as a role model, was spread to school children or even the broader society.

One day, Tejaswini heard that Bengaluru had become a garbage city from garden city. It had one of the highest green garbage content in the country. She was deeply disturbed and determined to change this.  

Around the same time, she had realised that majority of poor children who attended free government schools were not reaching even basic education levels. Many girls were dropping out earlier. The fact that mothers of future generations were losing out on education worried her.

Believing in the adage “Don’t teach philosophy to the hungry”, she decided to take action on both counts..

Since she had unravelled these issues layer by layer, she got very involved – effort-wise but also emotionally. Essentially, she found her calling in improving the future of the under-privileged school children – both in terms of nutrition, health and education but also sustainability in their neighbourhood and the city around. 

The project started as a pilot – mid-day meals, green kitchen, Green Sunday tree planting, etc. The success of each step spurred her on to further action. As the initiative became larger, thousands of volunteers joined her effort creating a movement. Their energy continues to drive her passion to do more.

Tejaswini has a demonstrated track record of already having implemented the project for 20+ years.

●      Mid-day meal programme serving over 150,000 students daily, delivering over 500 million meals over the years

●      Bengaluru kitchen fully green including being zero garbage and completely fossil-fuel free

●      Multiple Green Life style initiatives including tree planting, resource saving, avoiding disposables

●      Continuous improvements as a way of life e.g. simplification of cooking process, unique plate-bank to eliminate disposables in events and many others

●      Handholding many other large and small kitchens in going green.

All these initiatives are already running due to the leadership ofTejaswini and the hard work of her team of staff and volunteers.  Many others are eager to adopt our model. We are focused on

●      scaling up and expanding it beyond our current resources

●      becoming a role model to have a broader effect both in India and overseas

In summary, she is extremely well qualified to deliver the next stage of the project because

●      She is personally committed to these projects and is involved in planning, implementing and monitoring

●      She believes that she has to be the change that she wants to see.

●      A large and capable volunteer team that is equally committed

●      She knows the ground reality, also knows that the model she has built is replicable and scaling up

●      She also has proven capability to manage the finances so that project runs efficiently

A recent example during COVID-19 pandemic. 

• Strict lock-down by the government; schools were closed
• Mid-day meal kitchen was temporarily closed after 16 years.
• All the staff left town except 5 staying on the premises

Then the Government contacted Tejaswini to supply meals for thousands of migrant labourers who were rendered jobless.

She had to do something urgently to help in this humanitarian crisis

• She immediately broadcast her need. Her volunteers identified critical roles like head cook, boiler operators, transporters from nearby institutions
• She assembled a volunteer team that joined purely for the cause
• Tejaswini herself instructed/trained them on how to do their jobs and detailed out all the precautions for COVID-19 for handling grocery, cooking, packing, transportation and food delivery.
• A whole new team was ready on the 3rd day! 
• First day, food was cooked for 5000, then 10000 next day.
• 670,000 meals for migrant laborers was delivered over 45 days of COVID lockdown
• Hygiene and social distancing norms were strictly followed all through

From her perspective, it was putting in to action “Sarve Janaha  Sukhino Bhavantu” (May all people be happy) and  “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (the whole universe is my family).

Tejaswini’s leadership ability can be consistently seen across a series of events. 

In 2006, to make an impact on green life adoption, Tejaswini implemented a bold plan to make the Bengaluru kitchen cooking meals for thousands of children every day green – Zero garbage and fossil-fuel free. Everybody said it could not be done. 

She prepared a plan to reach Zero garbage around “Reduce, Reuse and recycle”.

• Reducing usage of water, electricity, elimination of plastic wrapped groceries, etc.
• Reuse water used for washing rice for watering plants in the nearby garden, reuse cloth for making bags, etc.
• Compost the vegetable waste, etc. 

She simply removed all garbage bins from the kitchen. People became innovative and nearly 500 kg of garbage per day was reduced to ZERO!

All fossil fuels – Diesel/LPG were replaced by bio fuels. 15,000 LPG cylinders were saved per year.

Similarly, Adamya Chetana went to Jodhpur, Rajasthan, far away from the base to set up a kitchen. Extreme temperatures (3 - 45 degrees C), different language and food habits posed a challenge. Tejaswini and team went against all odds, set up new food processing equipment and processes to cater to local needs

The project has multiple dimensions to it that are highly innovative in the eco-system it was conceived and implemented in.

• To take a large community kitchen cooking meals for tens of thousands of people every day and making it  a zero garbage and free of fossil-fuel was a bold move indeed. And this was in 2006 when green lifestyle was much less understood or acted upon
• We evolved a simple system (researched to simplify cooking steps) that did not require skilled cooks, and a replicable model (with pre-measured ingredients) that could cook more food in less time and this also made it economical
• How do we encourage people to avoid creating plastic/paper garbage at large events? Another unique but simple idea! A plate-bank was set up where people can borrow steel plates, bowls, cutlery free of cost for their events. A one-time investment for us but this has made thousands of events green.
• An attitudinal change was brought in the staff by taking cooking and packing staff to schools where they saw really poor children benefitting by their work and this kindled a sense of service in them to work better
• And all the above and many more ideas implemented with the help of a large committed volunteer team

Tejaswini has helped many other large community kitchens and campuses to go green. Many smaller establishments have strived to replicate this too She knows that the model is not only innovative, but is simple and replicable.

As can be deduced from the above examples, Tejaswini’s theory of change is very simple.

●     Communicate the need for the change in a simple but impactful statement: when starting the drive for tree planting, she said “1:7 to 7:1”. Meaning we need 7 trees per person for oxygen to breathe, but in our cities, we have 7 people for each tree! This caught people’s imagination and now, everyone quotes that and is excited to be part of that change. 

●     Focus on the relevance and immediate benefit in: The change should be relevant to the people implementing it and they should see some benefit for themselves and people around them. e.g. zero garbage keeps their homes clean and planting trees helps their children breathe clean air 

●     Practicing at personal level and demonstrating commitment: Any of these ideas – be it zero garbage kitchen, plate-bank - they were all first practiced by Tejaswini before advising others to do so. This shows commitment and brings credibility.

• Small and incremental: The change for the common man should be incremental. Any drastic change in their daily routine or needing expensive equipment is not likely to be adopted. e.g. Hundreds of millions in India get their daily milk in sachets and they cut and dispose off a corner to pour the milk. Tons of plastic (just the cut corners) ends up in a landfill rather than get recycled along with the milk sachets. Tejaswini shared a simple message on social media to not separate the corner completely thus enabling the whole bag getting recycled. This went viral globally and a small change became part of daily lives at no cost.

●     Think big and communicate: When planning increasing the green cover for Bengaluru, instead of planning to plant 1000 or 10000 trees, a call was given to make the population  trees ratio from 7: 1 to 1:1. This requires around 10 million trees to be planted. But the simple message of 1:1 and a count of 10 million excited people to act. Thousands of people are involved in planting and nurturing saplings now.

It serves around 150,000 people every day.

We intend to remain at about 150,000+ per day in the near future even while we expand our focus to becoming a catalyst and replicating our models with other organizations.

Plans for next year

• Raise funds to be self-sufficient
• Launch the next innovation around helping others running mid-sized kitchen go green
• Lay the foundation for a research wing
• Plan to add serving nutritious breakfast to poor school children
• Enthuse and hand-hold 50 other organisations running large community kitchens build green kitchens thus acting as a catalyst and creating a multiplying the effect
• Reach and impact millions of households in India as well as other countries to reduce household waste thus contributing to reduction of resource usage and pollution
• Establish a research facility that will come out with further innovations in our field and help communicate and propagate them and help train people

Plan for the next 5 years:

Enlist support to build a global platform across countries that will develop a global partner network so that local entities in many countries can develop capabilities to help local kitchens go green leveraging local knowledge and ground realities

• Creating effective partnerships with local governments and building a blueprint for future programming scale 

• Identifying research projects that will allow us to validate our programming and its impact
• Policy framework that will lay down guidelines for community kitchens go green
• Volunteer and partner network across other parts of India and overseas

• We are planning to raise funds from government and corporates to carry out research and come out with an effective programme to propagate our models for a broader impact 
• We hope that winning the Elevate prize can help us go beyond what we are doing.  The prize will help establish our credibility globally, build partnerships and strengthen our efforts in influencing policy. 

We partner with multiple premier organisations in India including 

• State Governments of Karnataka, Rajasthan and the Central Government
• Sathya Sai Annapurna trust for specific meal programs
• Indian Institute of Science for some of our educational programs
• Essae Janani trust CSR fund to fund some of our programs
• Other government, quasi- government organisations and NGOs
• Lions for health camps and eye check-ups

Some of these organisations partner with Adamya Chetana as donors and others as part of their CSR activities for a shared social objective.

We continue to build a stronger (global) partner network where we work together on an ongoing basis on specific shared objectives.

Our non-profit business model comprises of 3 elements:

• -Volunteer driven: We are primarily a volunteer driven organisation. We have a core staff (employed full time or part time) of only about 150. Our volunteer team of more than 1,000 devote time regularly to work on projects.  This allows us to focus our resources on our work, rather than payroll costs.  
• -Government support: In addition to individual and corporate donors, we raise a part of our funds through government programs and grants.
• -Efficient execution: Meticulous planning, checklists to ensure excellent execution and taking continuous feedback from our beneficiaries to improve our programming  

We raise funds annually from corporate and individual donors. We also approach the local government for funding support for any large programs and events.

We have also relied heavily on:

Keeping the costs down by building a strong volunteer force for both execution and management. This also ensures higher commitment of the team because people who volunteer go beyond a job and are really committed to the cause and are passionate about delivering on that cause 

Reducing our resource need by efficient execution and going green by reducing our consumption and reusing where possible.

We have a successful history of fundraising.  We receive partial funding and raw materials from the government. This covers our operations.

In the past two years:

• We have raised 19.6 M USD from the government 
• We have also raised 0.5 M USD funds from donations
• We have received raw materials from the government worth about  0.26 M USD.
• Our direct revenue generation through sale of goods or services is negligible. 

For our next phase of growth, on top of our ongoing spend, we need to raise approximately USD 6.5 Million (Rs. 500 million) in the next 5 years. 

USD 660,000 (Rs. 50 million) 

We plan to rapidly expand our impact on other organisations rather than just simply scaling up our own. We aim to act as a catalyst to influence hundreds of other organisations in India and other countries who can benefit by following our model.

This will involve building a research centre to incubate our ideas, developing highly replicable models and sharing our ideas and blueprint globally.  

We expect Elevate prize to help us in that direction by

• -Creating awareness of our work and brand globally
• -Helping us connect with other organizations which will hopefully build a network which can grow in to a partner eco-system
• -Irrespective of whether we win or not, it helps benchmark our project and operations globally in order to improve our efforts.  

Funding: 

We need to raise additional funding to set up research facilities as well as start working with other organisations. 

Mentors/Advisors:

We would greatly benefit from learnings of others with global exposure and hopefully we would be able to help them equally through sharing our experience and approach.   

We believe we need to build a global platform to enable large community kitchens to go green. This will require either a few organizations with presence in many countries or many local entities from different countries with whom we can work to propagate our model which can be localised to each country based on local customs, regulations, etc.

• Food technology institutions
• Ecology focused institutions
• Social sciences institutions
• Large community kitchens Organizations looking to fund such initiatives globally