Here’s The Remarkable Story Of The Garbage Cafe In Chattisgarh

Here’s how the thing works in most cafes and restaurants. Usually, on nine out of ten occasions, when you visit a restaurant or hit up a cafe, you eat and drink and in exchange, you pay cash, which constitutes your bill. But then, that’s not how it works at the Garbage Cafe in Chattisgarh. So, one could wonder as to how it works then?

At the Garbage Cafe in Chattisgarh, one is provided free food in exchange for plastic waste. Immediately after this news was recently reported, there were hundreds of thousands who were interested in knowing about the Garbage cafe in Chattisgarh and as to its exact whereabouts.

Well, for starters, it appears that there is a great sense as to why there’s a Garbage Cafe in Chattisgarh. While, of late, a lot of news has remained with Madhya Pradesh’s Indore, crowned with being the cleanest of all Indian cities, Chattisgarh’s Ambikapur happens to be the second-most cleanest city in all of India.

And truth be told, this indeed is, a brilliant achievement for Ambikapur for there are millions of cities in India, after all. Therefore, it also makes a lot of sense for there to be a Garbage Cafe in Chattisgarh here. Recently, the state’s health minister Mr. T S Singh Deo happened to inaugurate the said cafe and confirmed that it will provide free food in the exchange for plastic waste.

But that said, here’s what is important to note. The Garbage cafe in Chattisgarh is actually a part of the Prime Minister’s ambitious goal toward making India “plastic-free”, an effort commonly known as the “plastic-free” India resolve.

A popular news media outlet happened to highlight key insights and developments pertaining to the cafe and shared:

“I am so proud of this unique idea and initiative, taken by AMC. The entire nation took several measures and steps to discourage using Single-use plastic on Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary. But AMC took such an innovative step to keep the city plastic-free, I feel so good. This initiative has achieved support on the national and international level,” said Singh Deo.

The concept of this cafe is that people can get their plastic waste weighed and enjoy a warm meal in return.

“When I got to know about this cafe, I started collecting and storing plastic waste from my house. This is a great initiative to make the citizens aware to keep the city plastic-free. Through this initiative we can get two benefits, first, we can keep our vicinity clean and second, we can get delicious food in exchange for plastic waste,” said a resident.

Furthermore, here’s what garnered a lot of local media attention in lines with the cafe’s opening in Chattisgarh recently. When the Garbage cafe was inaugurated in the city of Ambikapur, the state’s health minister TS Singh Deo wasn’t just an inaugurator of the facility or a famous visitor; he actually happened to buy half a kilogram of plastic waste to enjoy food in exchange for the same.

In lines with the benevolent principle of the eatery, the restaurant goes by the simple albeit compelling philosophy: “the more the waste, the better the taste.”

Some early impressions about the cafe and the quality of the food therein were also on the positive side, as reported: “I brought half a kilogram of plastic waste and got delicious food here. I think this is a great step taken by AMC. The food quality is also very satisfactory,” said another resident.

Suggested Read: Know about the cleanest railway station in India.

And all of the above said, perhaps it’s about time that the big cosmopolitan cities of the country took a leaf from Chattisgarh’s Ambikapur’s book. Why can’t one see similar concepts emerge in mainstream metros like Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai?