Indonesia has more 27.77 million of under poverty population from around 270 million population in 2017 (https://www.bps.go.id/website/images/Kemiskinan-Maret-2017-ind.jpg). Family living at poverty can not afford to buy their daily needs in bulk, including detergent. Instead, they will buy single-use sachet everyday at the local grocery shop. Their average use of detergent (based on early random personal survey in two village at East Java and Banten Province) is 1 sachets per day. This consumption leads to 5.5 million single-use sachet waste per day or about 2 billion per year (with the assumption of 5 person per family). This huge amount of waste have not included the waste from the slightly above poverty and middle income families which also always buy their detergent in single-use sachet because they want to limit their usage (for middle income family: their helpers usually use a high amount of detergent if they give them in bulk).
This consumption leads to 5.5 million single-use sachet waste per day or about 2 billion per year.
We have to tackle this issue before our landfill and ocean (yes, you'll find many sachet garbage in the coastline near the populous area) are seriously hard to be cleaned and way more expensive. The saddest impact would be that we are one of the reason of many killed ocean beings just for having our clothes cleaned everyday. That's very shame of us.
I have the idea to lessen the usage of single-use sachet detergent (powder and liquid) by redesigning the delivery system. If until now, poor families buy single-use sachet detergent everyday at the local grocery store, then in the future the local grocery store will sell refillable (single-use) detergent to these families. The refill will be delivered by our "Lady Bike Cleaning Specialist". The Lady will also sell the detergent door to door with the same price as sold at local grocery store. So everyone who missed the Lady Bike schedule will buy the refill at the local grocery store.
The refill will be delivered by our "Lady Bike Cleaning Specialist".
Lady Bike system is a modification of Lady Yakult in Indonesia or Lady Grameen-Danone in Bangladesh who sell ready to drink Yakult/yogurt door to door. Another example in Indonesia, we've seen so many door to door refill businesses in villages and urban slums such as for crackers, traditional cakes, bread, etc. There is also door to door services such as fixing clothes and shoes. So this door to door delivery system has been implemented in food and services small industries. Nevertheless, we'll have to see if there's same chance for consumer products such as detergent (maybe later: shampoo, soaps, etc).
we'll have to see if there's same chance for consumer products such as detergent (maybe later: shampoo, soaps, etc)
Beside its impact to the environment, Lady Bike will help unemployed lady in village and urban slum areas to have added revenue. They needn't have to work full time, only around 3-6 hours a day to deliver the detergent, then the rest of the day they can take care of their children and household as usual.
Lady Bike will help unemployed lady in village and urban slum areas to have added revenue.
In the first phase of my idea, I will start to prototyping and piloting at Sambikerep District, Surabaya City, East Java Province. After some refinement of the program, I will leverage the reach of the business to Surabaya City, Gresik City, and Sidoarjo City. And if the model has been validated in those three cities, I'll move to make nationwide impact while do research to replicate the system in another country by their own local resources.
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CommentIrina Ankudinova