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In many places of the world, trash management is a challenge.  And in countries such as India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Indonesia, trash piling up is quickly becoming a major environmental and health concern.

This inspired the young entrepreneur Jaidev Shah to come up with a solution.  In his home country of India, there is little recycling infrastructure.  People comb the landfill, searching for pieces of trash, old electronics and cell phones, or recyclables.  They sell anything of value to the recycling companies for meager wages.  Often, these people live in the landfill and suffer from a host of health conditions.  Landfill fires are also common.  Piles of trash several stories tall often burn, polluting the surrounding neighborhoods.

This inspired Jaidev to come up with a solution.  He designed and built a prototype robot that can go into the landfills, identifying and collecting recyclables and finding landfill fires.  After showcasing his design at Maker Fest, he was named as a RajeevCircle Fellow, and traveled to Silicon Valley to showcase his project.  Now, Jaidev serves as an inspiration that we can all solve engineering and humanitarian problems in our own neighborhoods, one step at a time.
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