Access to and understanding of accurate information is essential for moving the needle on any issue. Conversations around sustainability, however, can often appear confusing or disconnected.

So, how must we talk so that critical knowledge can break through the barriers of geography, languages, and cultures to reach, inform, and influence people?

Malba Project champions this cause, leveraging various communication tools and engagement strategies to localise, deconstruct, and demystify complex issues of sustainability to catalyse action across scales for real-world impact.

Shamita Chaudhary set up the Malba Project in 2021 to spread awareness and develop solutions for the often overlooked construction and demolition (C&D) waste — or Malba in Hindi— which accounts for 30-40 percent of global solid waste.

One of the main drives under this project is the Malba Spotting Walks, a community-focused initiative to increase awareness and track illegal dumping spots. Heritage walks and clean-up drives around Delhi have brought together volunteers from across the city. Data collected from these walks has helped form the Malba Map, an online repository of C&D waste infrastructure in Delhi.

Learnings are also compiled into blogs and bite-sized social media content, which have attracted like-minded people from architecture and academia. Six months into setting up Malba Project, a community started forming to tackle on-ground issues like accessibility to recycling plants, gaps in policy, and capacitating urban local bodies and malba haulers.

Through pilot projects commissioned by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi in 2022 and 2023, the Malba Project built a network of 49 trucks and 19 redis, trained malba haulers and MCD personnel, and successfully diverted over a million kg of malba from illegal dumping over a span of 4 months.