Meel focuses on waste water management

As part of a social project, architect Vishnupriya wanted to design a toilet that would consume less water in government schools. She started exploring various case studies and one such case study led her to a small town in Tiruchy called Musuri. There she found a community public toilet, which doesn’t use water for flushing and converts the waste into manure. “It was located in a residential area where none of the houses had a toilet facility and the locals used this common eco-san toilet. The person who guided me at Musuri took me to a waste segregation unit, wherein they collected segregated waste at the source level. I was surprised to see how effectively they practised waste segregation and wanted to make a video about this small town,” she begins the chat.

It was an eye-opener for the architect and made her question why the same method is not happening in major cities where waste management is a bigger concern and an urgent need. “My association with the place and people there grew organically. I met a lot of people who were working selflessly in small pockets without making any noise. I wanted to showcase this aspect to the world. During this journey, there came a point where I wondered if the documentary alone would do the job with which intention we began the film,” adds Vishnupriya.

What started as a documentary on ‘Domestic Waste’ in 2016 has outgrown itself to become an organisation today. The documentary (which is in the post-production stage) rather than only highlighting the problems of domestic waste, also features successful sustainable models by which we can deal with domestic waste. “With these methods and models, we can establish a minimum damage control with regard to our environment and fellow human beings who handle our waste on a daily basis,” she hopes.

As a community, we always speak and highlight the problems but hardly think of any solutions. “We are yet to have the infrastructure and technology to manage waste, we just have to look at simple solutions and that’s exactly what my documentary talks about. We have shot across Tamil Nadu, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ladakh and Delhi,” the architect-turned-filmmaker muses.

Vishnupriya wanted to take her documentary to schools and architecture schools/institutes. “I want waste management studies as part of the curriculum. Architects have a huge responsibility to come up with innovative solutions and I didn’t have any subjects related to it.” She also wants to turn this model into a policy law so that it becomes a norm.