National level meeting with the street vendors and their leaders was conducted from February 15 to 18, 2025 in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh. A total of 80 participants attended the event, engaging in discussions and activities focused on the issue of single-use plastic (SUP) and its detrimental impact on both the environment and livelihoods.
The daylong session began with an interactive icebreaker activity designed to gauge the participants' knowledge about the types of single-use plastics and their broader implications. This served as a refresher from the September 2024 National meeting, reinforcing previous discussions on the importance of reducing plastic waste.
A key highlight of the meeting was the insightful presentation by Om Prakash Singh, who highlighted the alarming effects of plastic pollution in the Himalayan region. He explained the plastic production process, the harmful chemicals involved, and the lasting environmental damage caused by plastic waste.
In response to eliminating the single-use plastic pollution, Satyarupa Sekhar conducted an engaging session on sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics. She introduced the concept of the "reuse system" as a viable solution, especially within the street food vending. She provided several culturally embedded examples of reuse systems, emphasizing their benefits. She also outlined a practical model for street food vendors to replace single-use plastics with reusable steel plates, cups, and utensils. The installation of dishwashing machines to efficiently clean these reusable items was also discussed, including details about the system's functionality and operational processes.
Further expanding on the concept of the reuse system, Souvik Ghosh presented an analysis of the financial aspects of implementing a dishwashing center (DWC) for street vendors. He provided an estimated budget for setting up a DWC, alongside an analysis of its operational costs and the proposed user fee for cleaning the utensils. Ghosh also compared the savings and potential cost reduction by eliminating the need to purchase single-use plastic items on a daily basis versus adopting a reuse system.
The meeting also included the current updates on the reuse pilot initiatives in cities such as Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, and Pune. Advocacy efforts have been initiated in several locations, including Raipur, Imphal, Hyderabad, and Newtown, Kolkata. These initiatives are aimed at encouraging more street food vendors to adopt sustainable practices, helping to reduce plastic waste and promote environmental consciousness within the sector.
In an ongoing effort of building capacity of street vendors for urban mobility, we also conducted a hands-on workshop on 'Inclusive Street Design' with Demand Charters. The session was curated to empower street vendors with street design tools to address the issue of rightful vending spaces on streets. Street vendors tried planning and visualizing with mock of the streets to understand issues with street space and incorporate vending spaces with street design concepts and power of Multi Utility Zones (MUZs) in an attempt to resolve the street space conflict with other road users.
Street Vendors' Charter of Demands covers their issues supported by various national and state level policy provisions to strengthen their voice when consulting with government bodies and authorities. Along with this we also equipped street vendors in adopting a practice of writing to authorities, documentation and bookkeeping to have accountability with government agencies. Street vendors are deprived of their rightful vending spaces on the street despite having the right to vend on streets according to the Street Vendors Act of 2014 and are often observed as encroachment and obstruction on streets and faces eviction drives. None of the states and cities have tried to address this pressing issue.
Street Design is an effective tool to design the street space for all road users with inclusive strategies based on Indian Road Congress Road Design Codes (IRC) being statutory according to Motor vehicles Act of 1988 (amended in 2019). The strategy of accommodating the street vendors in Multi Utility Zones (MUZs), a zone on road spaces to accommodate stationary elements of road like streetlights, parking, street furniture as well as street vendors to have rightful vending spaces along the streets in these MUZ spaces without obstructing any road user’s movement zones.
The meeting concluded with a shared commitment among all participants to continue advocating for the reduction of single-use plastics and the promotion of the reuse system as the sustainable alternative in street food vending.