When we think of waste management, our minds often turn to advanced technologies or municipal trucks, but the real champions of this ecosystem often remain invisible —informal waste workers. In her thought-provoking article, Gayatri Divecha, Head of CSR, Godrej Industries Group, sheds light on these silent heroes who work in hazardous conditions to recycle millions of tons of waste annually. Despite their vital contributions to India’s waste economy, which recycles far more through informal channels than formal systems, these workers lack basic social security, healthcare, and safe working conditions.
A seasoned CSR leader with over 15 years of experience, Gayatri combines her expertise and passion for social equity to advocate for the formalization and empowerment of this critical workforce. Through real-life stories and data-driven insights, she highlights their immense contributions to India’s waste economy and outlines how corporate CSR programs can drive meaningful change by formalizing workers, ensuring access to entitlements, and investing in their well-being.
With a powerful call to action, Gayatri urges organizations to recognize these unsung heroes and create sustainable solutions to uplift their lives. Read on to discover how we can collectively honour and support these vital contributors to the waste management ecosystem.
Championing Change: 3 CSR Steps to Support India’s Waste Warriors
Despite shouldering huge responsibilities and contributing to the waste management industry, the efforts of informal waste workers go unrecognized. It is beyond time we formalize this cadre and mainstream them
Jagruti, 38 years is an informal waste worker, just like both her parents. For the past 26 years, Jagruti has been working in a landfill in Mumbai. Her work involves bending over to rummage in waste to find items with the most resale or recyclable value. Age has now begun to catch up on her, Jagruti has been experiencing multiple health problems like back pain, skin rashes. Recently, she poked herself with a needle, not the first time for her or others like her. However, this time around she is nervous that she may have contracted some dangerous disease.
Just like Jagruti, there are many more informal waste workers with jholas on their backs who walk around our streets looking for waste items with the most resale value. Over 4 million waste workers are an integral but largely forgotten and informal part of the waste management ecosystem. To put this in perspective, 4 million is approximately 29% of the 13.8 million white collar workforce of India as of 2021. Owing to their back breaking work and hazardous work conditions, most do not live beyond 45 years of age.
Informal waste workers collect and sort recyclable materials from waste generated by households and businesses. They play a crucial role in reducing the volume of waste that ends up in landfills and contribute to the informal recycling industry in India. These actors often bridge the critical gap of waste segregation and supplying it to the formal recyclers or waste management companies.
Despite being referred to as the Informal waste sector, its functioning is far from that. The sector works every day and that too seamlessly. In Mumbai alone, around 1,50,000 waste pickers work on the streets to extract value from waste and direct it towards industries and vendors who build on it, adding tremendous value to the waste economy.
If we go by the numbers, India has a high recycling rate owing to these workers who toil away to pick up after us.According to a study by Centre for Science & Environment (CSE), the annual generation of plastic waste is approximately 3.36 million tons, out of which only 2-2.35 million tons are being recycled formally. On the other hand, informal recycling by waste pickers and Kabadiwala Associations is estimated to recycle around 6.5-8.5 million tons of plastic waste, roughly comparable to a landfill the size of Central Park in New York City. However, our official waste management data fails to capture this. These findings suggest that informal sector interventions play a significant role in the recycling of plastic waste in India.
Informal recycling has unique environmental and economic benefits due to its low capital model, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption; making products from reused materials takes less energy, and is a valuable commodity in the Indian context, than those made from raw materials.
The informal waste sector also offers employment to a section of the population that may otherwise not have access to other livelihood options owing to educational constraints, or physical or mental disabilities or other reasons. Most informal waste workers belong to castes considered backward, are often migrants and can be found living in informal settlements. They survive on meagre daily wages minus job security, access to social security or government welfare schemes.Their work conditions are also stressful lacking basic necessities like a functional toilet and worse, they survive hazardous work conditions. Imagine stepping your foot into human feces or a sanitary pad wrapped in newspaper; imagine being pierced bya used syringeor opening a box to find rotten food. This is everyday life for 4 million waste workers.
Despite the indispensable role that waste pickers play in India’s fast-growing cities, they face a variety of challenges, and barriers to economic and social advancement. These challenges range from intergenerational poverty, casteism, lack of vocational training and Government ID proofs which restricts them from both formal employment and access to Government entitlements. Women waste workers have it harder, having to navigate gender dynamics. Whether it is lack of support during menstruation, getting a lower pay than their male counterparts or facing a higher risk for abuse and violence. Further, care giving responsibilities within the home also fall disproportionately on the women. This means, a women waste worker after having spent 8-10 hours bending over periodically to collect waste and carrying it on her back comes home to cook a meal and care for old parents. This causes immense fatigue and distress for them. It is no surprise then that the average life expectancy of waste workers is 39-45 years of age compared to the national average of 70-75 years.
Here is what corporates and funders can do to include them in the formal workforce:
1. Entitlements
Since informal waste workers often lack Government ID proof, they remain oblivious to welfare schemes designed for them. As per UNDP data, 90% waste workers own an Aadhar card, however, less than 5% of those surveyed had any health insurance. Further only 20% of waste workers with a bank account were linked to the Jan Dhan Yojana.Plugging these gaps is crucial, we can begin by registering all the informal waste workers with ULBs and providing them ID cards that recognise them as municipal workers with a clear role.
2. Invest in these lives
It is pertinent we invest in upskilling of informal waste workers. This can help them to diversify incomes and overcome intergenerational poverty. These trainings can be imparting digital literacy, financial literacy, soft skills training. Another aspect of investing in these lives can be taken as adopting measures to ensure basic safe work conditions, providing their families security and health benefits, ensuring access to education for their children. Stree Mukti Sangathan (SMS) a non-profit in Mumbai, under its ambit organised women waste pickers and trained to provide waste management services to housing societies, campuses and trained in diverse skills like gardening, vermiculture, and operating biogas plants. This has enabled more than 1000 women who collect waste for a living to find employment as housekeepers, facility managers, and waste managers.
3. Cooperatives
Forming cooperatives of informal waste workers is an excellent way to foster camaraderie and belongingness in these workers.Nonprofit Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and SNDT University together piloted a program to work with 1,500 waste pickers in Pune. One of their interventions involved forming the Solid Waste Collection Handling (SWaCH)a wholly-owned workers’ cooperativeas a pro-poor public–private partnership in 2007. The cooperative with 3,750 waste picker members is currently providing doorstep waste collection services to close to 10 lakh households in Pune. Cooperatives offer loan facilities to its members, upskilling opportunities which informal waste workers can benefit off and, better work conditions. Moreover, these cooperatives also offer an avenue for grievance redressal, a platform to be seen and heard for the informal waste workers which they currently lack.
It is beyond time we begin to account for these lives. A true honour to their tireless efforts is bringing out policies and programmes that empower them rather than just celebratory measures.
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